







' J''--. ■: 
















r'^^ 






^^•i' 










^°-*, 










%^^^ ^ 
v-^^ 













.0' 






.°-v 



.^0- 



Leonard Wood 




Vv^'-H 



% 



U^^ u^ 



<^ir^A t ■> » -y 



Leonard Wood 

Administrator, Soldier, and Citizen 

By 

William Herbert Hobbs 

Professor in the University of Michigan, Member of the 
Executive Committee of the National Security League, 
Author of " The World War and Its Consequences," etc. 

With an Introduction by 
Henry A. Wise Wood 



Illustrated 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

^be ftnicfterbocfter pred0 

1920 



.WS6 



Copyright, 1020 

BY 

WILLIAM HERBERT HOBBS 



APK l"9':i;3'<^0 



'CI.A566573 



Ut \ 



To the hundreds of thousands of brave men of the A Hied Armies 

Who gave their lives a needless sacrifice 

Because the solemn warnings insistently sounded 

By Leonard Wood and Theodore Roosevelt were disregarded 
by the American Government. 



FOREWORD 

No American who is solicitous of the future 
of his country can well avoid glancing at the 
map of the worid with the question in mind: 
By what means have some nations achieved 
suzerainty over mankind, while others remain 
subordinate nations, whatever be the nominal 
degree of their independence? 

Why are France, Great Britain, and the 
United States, powers of the first order? he 
will ask ; why was Germany such a power, and 
why are Italy and Japan approaching this 
high estate? Then he will inquire why the 
prerogative of decision among all the world's 
nations recently gathered at Paris should have 
fallen into the hands of three nations, and 
eventually into the hands of two. 

He will wish to know the nature of the quali- 
ties which enabled Germany almost to gain 
the mastery of Europe, which enabled France 
to endure Germany's attack, and which en- 

7 



8 Foreword 

abled the English-speaking peoples to over- 
throw the one, deliver the other, and to come 
forth with the control of the world in their 
hands. 

These are deep questions, in the sense that 
they reach to the fundamental phenomena 
upon which the structure of organized society 
is reared. But they are not abtruse questions; 
they may be understood if one but grasp the 
truth that civilization rests upon the superi- 
ority of its military power, of its weapons and 
warlike prowess. 

If this were not so, the great mass of man- 
kind, which is composed of savage and bar- 
barous races, would long since have 
overthrown the small groups of peoples who 
have collectively created modern society and 
who now enjoy its fruits, and who, despite 
their insignificance in nimibers, are able to 
maintain and develop this society in the 
very midst of hostile multitudes. Were the 
military ramparts to fall by which this 
society is protected, there would instantly 
occur, not merely the sack of a Rome, but 
the destruction of civilization itself. 



Foreword 9 

As Russia — and some of our own communi- 
ties — have recently shown us, the savage and 
barbarous races are not confined to their 
native habitats, but their members are 
amongst us in great throngs, wearing our 
raiment and speaking our tongue. Some of 
them appear clad in the robes of our learning 
and culture, while simulating belief in our tra- 
ditions and acquiescence in our governmental 
institutions; but they are nevertheless every- 
where ready to throw over the established 
order so that they may possess themselves 
of its fruits without having to accept its, to 
them, alien and hateful restraints. One need 
only picture Western Europe, Great Britain, 
and our own continent, as having been plimged, 
as Russia has been plunged, into a condition 
of social and governmental disintegration, to 
realize whither a general barbaric eruption 
within the modem world would lead it. 

So it is that civiHzation requires for its 
preservation the exercise of unsleeping vigi- 
lance, within its borders no less than beyond 
them. It must keep itself ready to defend 
promptly at its centre its traditions, and to 



10 Foreword 

save itself from disintegrating revolution, set 
afoot by those not of Western blood whom it 
has cherished and taught, and by their native 
allies, while at its boundaries the barbarian 
must ever be confronted by invulnerable 
barriers. 

Because military force still is, as it always 
has been, the bulwark of civilization, the 
greatest calamity that could befall the human 
race would be invited by the disarmament of 
its advanced peoples. So long as civilized 
man shall employ his knowledge, skill, and 
highly developed spiritual powers to create 
and wield armaments that are in complexity 
and might beyond the grasp of savage or 
barbarian, his conceptions of life will prevail. 
But, so soon as he shall cease to cultivate and 
himself control the mechanisms and art of war- 
fare, then, that which he terms his social order 
will perish, and mankind will find itself once 
more at the foot of the ladder of intellectual 
growth, spiritual development, and Hberty. 

If we consider now the organized peoples 
that make up modern society, we find them 
in various stages of development . Some, being 



Foreword 1 1 

unable to govern themselves, are wholly 
governed by their rulers, while others wholly 
govern themselves. Between the complete 
subject and the complete citizen, history 
attests, many generations, living under favor- 
able conditions, must intervene. A nation of 
vassals can no more successfully become a 
nation of citizens, at a single step — as the 
experience of Russia proves — than can a 
nation of citizens successfully be made a 
nation of vassals. This should be borne in 
mind by those self-governing peoples who, 
like ourselves, thoughtlessly invite promiscu- 
ous immigration. 

Social customs differ, those of some peoples 
being offensive to other peoples, while no two 
peoples place quite the same emphasis upon 
any precept of the moral law. As habits of 
thought and life, and material necessities, differ 
among peoples, so differ tenets of international 
morality, and, consequently, the reactions of 
nations when international questions arise. 
Some are fortunately, and others are unfor- 
tunately, situated with respect to the acquire- 
ment of wealth and power. Some are more 



12 Foreword 

keenly alive than are others to the acquirement 
and use of practical knowledge. They differ 
in industrial energy and wisdom. Some 
peoples possess the local sense only, while 
others possess the world sense: hence the 
former expand but slowly, while the latter 
reach into the corners of the earth, found 
colonies everywhere, and take into their hands 
the direction of vast territories and the seas. 

Between the two extremes are peoples in 
various stages of culture and growth, each 
dissatisfied with its lot and ever striving to 
better it by diplomacy or the sword. Thus, 
struggles for trade, for territorial or racial ex- 
pansion, for security, with their ever present 
possibilities of war, are, and have always been, 
current phenomena in the international life 
of the civilized world. 

We therefore come to see that there are three 
permanent dangers which menace the state, 
each of a military character, resulting from 
the hostility of (a) savage or barbaric peoples, 
(b) those within the state who wish to over- 
throw it, and (c) other, competitive, states. 

In our search to discover the qualities which 



Foreword 13 

will make of our own commonwealth an en- 
during republic we ask: What is it that has 
enabled the English-speaking peoples to 
achieve what is in effect the mastery of the 
world? Having learned the cause, we shall 
wish to apply it diligently in our affairs. I 
recently asked one, well grounded in history, 
to name the single most important factor in 
the emergence of the English-speaking peoples. 
"The unshakable self-confidence of the Anglo- 
Saxon, " was the reply. Such is an effect, not 
a cause, but its suggestion furnishes an in- 
valuable clue to the cause. 

The self-confidence of the Anglo-Saxon is 
the stamp of his victories, — of the victories 
of the EngHsh-speaking peoples, whose affairs 
are conducted in accordance with Anglo- 
Saxon traditions and practices, notwithstand- 
ing their absorption of the blood of other 
peoples. 

The Anglo-Saxon achieved victory over his 
rulers when he secured liberty of conscience 
and person, and when, throughout subsequent 
centuries of hardship, heperf ected himself inthe 
practice of self-government. He has achieved 



14 Foreword 

victory over surrounding nature, from which he 
has wrung more useful secrets, and set them to 
work for man, than has all the world besides. 
He has achieved victory over the wild wastes 
and tribes of the earth, which his organizing 
skill has brought under cultivation and 
control. He has achieved victory over all the 
peoples that throughout nearly nine hundred 
years have come against him. And, as his 
greatest victory, he has spread the benign 
complexion of his social and governmental 
institutions over the social and governmental 
institutions of mankind. 

But what are the characteristics that have 
enabled the so-called Anglo-Saxon to achieve 
these victories ? The preservation of his group , 
and the cultivation of the traditional practices 
which have held it knit closely together and 
given it enduring form, have been to him 
the first duties of his being. To safeguard 
these, he has been ever ready to lay down 
his individual life. In response to an attack 
upon either, he has invariably chosen to svd- 
fer, rather than to yield. Having set upon 
his group and its institutions a higher value 



Foreword 15 

than upon his individual life, he has been 
enduring in the midst of hardship, steadfast 
beneath the harrow of adverse circumstance, 
and fearless under the threat of death. In a 
world subject to volcanic national eruption, 
to meteoric national ascension and cataclysmic 
echpse, the Anglo-Saxon has neither paused 
nor hurried, but has moved forward to mastery 
by the application of inexorable glacierlike 
pressure. 

In all things he is practical. He compre- 
hends the earth and the material realities of 
existence, and deals with each upon its own 
terms. He knows that if men would stand 
firmly they must set themselves squarely 
upon the ground; but he knows also that if 
they would control themselves and other men, 
they must cultivate their intellectual and 
spiritual qualities and make of these the in- 
spirators of their conduct. In him, therefore, 
strength is tempered with kindliness ; firmness, 
with gentleness; justice, with mercy; con- 
viction, with tolerance; controversy, with 
chivalry, and ambition, with thought for the 
welfare of mankind. In the Anglo-Saxon, the 



1 6 Foreword 

materialist and idealist do not part company. 
Both, as he instinctively knows, are the arti- 
sans of nationality, and must be found func- 
tioning harmoniously in the daily life of a 
people if it is to endure and achieve greatly. 

It is imperative that we have before us this 
view of the past ; that we know and apply the 
qualities upon which our national life is based, 
as we enter the complex struggle for the pres- 
ervation of our institutions into which we are 
now suddenly plunged. We have amongst us 
those who, hating the institutions of civilized 
society, would raze these, and others who, de- 
testing national separatism, would destroy the 
jealous spirit of devoted love for group and 
country to which we owe all that we are as a 
race and a nation, and replace it with a dilute 
attachment for mankind in general and for no 
nation in particular. 

The first represent the materialist from 
whom the idealist has parted company, while 
the second represent the idealist who has for- 
saken the materialist. Both will inevitably 
fail in their attempts violently to remodel the 
spiritual and material agencies by which we 



Foreword 17 

have arrived where we are. But we must be 
prepared to pay the price of their defeat; we 
must be ready to suffer rather than to yield, 
if we are to avoid a calamitous transforma- 
tion within, and preserve our form of govern- 
ment, or to avoid a disastrous surrender of 
our national liberty of action, and maintain 
our independence of foreign control. 

The struggles in which we are now engaged 
are but a continuation of the series of events 
with which this book deals. In all of these 
events the same forces are to be seen more 
or less in co-operation, the one striving to 
destroy the national spirit, in order to bring 
about a revolution with safety and profit 
to itself; the other seeking to betray it, in 
order to bring all peoples into, or under the 
control of, a single international body. Pa- 
triotism is in the sight of both an offensive 
attribute which, because it stands in the 
way of both, is attacked by them in common. 
Thus we find the gross forces of revolu- 
tion in virtual alliance with the cultivated 
forces of ultra idealism, which explains the 
philosophy of those who, while leading the 



1 8 Foreword 

second, tolerate and condone the offences of 
the first. 

The recent Preparedness movement was the 
natural expression of the reaction of patriotic 
men of strong nationalistic feeling against the 
non-patriotic, internationalistic philosophy of 
President Wilson. That this movement was 
able at last to overturn his purpose, and to 
precipitate him into a war that was repug- 
nant to him, is not cause for surprise; but 
that so great an effort was needed to arouse 
an English-speaking commonwealth to perform 
the patriotic duty of defending its nationality, 
is cause not alone for surprise, but for concern, 
— concern which is intensified by the herculean 
efforts now being required of another patriotic 
group, in the pending contest over the terms 
upon which we shall join a league of nations, to 
prevent the same community from yielding up 
its independence and surrendering the control 
of its destiny into the hands of a group of 
alien peoples. 

In the various phases of the struggle for the 
preservation of traditional personal and na- 
tional rights, which began with the Prepared- 



Foreword 19 

ness movement, there have stood forth two 
antithetic types of man. The one, the de- 
molisher and reconstructionist who, whether 
as pacifist or covenanter, would first demolish 
and then abruptly remould the institutions of 
his people, upon an arbitrary plan of his own 
devising, and toss his nation into the melting 
pot of internationalism; the other, the con- 
servator, the patriot committed to the con- 
servation of his institutions and their orderly 
development, and the preservation of his 
nation's independence, who beHeves in the 
painstaking creation of a condition of inter- 
national harmony based upon justice and 
mutual accommodation, but not upon the 
pooling of sovereignties. 

Between these types no reconciliation is 
possible, nor is compromise possible between 
the theories of life and government which 
they profess. The first neither likes nor 
trusts either the processes by which Anglo- 
Saxon civilization has been achieved, or their 
resulting institutions; the second is the very 
product of these processes, and his free insti- 
tutions are the breath of his nostrils. The 



20 Foreword 

one is exotic; the other is native. The one 
reacted to the war and the peace in ways 
wholly unknown to the history of English- 
speaking peoples; the other reacted to both 
in normal Anglo-Saxon fashion. 

The story told by Professor Hobbs in his 
World War and Its Consequences, and in this 
book, is the story of the struggle between an 
alien parasitic growth, and the sturdy native 
tree about which it is stealthily entwining its 
tendrils. It is the story of the stout resistance 
of the Anglo-Saxon spirit to strangulation by 
ostensibly native fingers through the veins 
of which runs hostile alien blood. Twice has 
the man of this book stood forth as the defend- 
ing instrimient of that spirit; at Plattsburg, 
while there gathered the clouds of war, and at 
Omaha and Gary, after the clouds had broken 
and gone. In both crises the native spirit was 
personified in Leonard Wood, and in both it 
prevailed. Did this soldier and administrator 
not possess in extraordinary degree the wise 
and virile qualities which have brought about 
and preserve the ascendancy of our great, our 
dominant race, he could not have aroused his 



Foreword 21 

countrymen from the somnolence of a spiritual 
drugging by the administrative head of their 
government and set them to prepare for their 
hour of trial, nor could he have stilled the revolu- 
tionary mob at Gary, without the loss of a life. 
Of his historian, also, something is to be said. 
In these days of an idealism unrelated to the 
facts of life, when the word patriotism must 
be spoken apologetically, if at all, in many 
halls of learning, and when the charter of our 
liberties is often the stock subject of academic 
jest, it is an occurrence of no small importance 
when one meets suddenly, face to face, a 
scholar who is a patriot. Such a man is the 
author of this book. Beneath the superstruc- 
ture of his erudition, there lies an Americanism 
so profound and strong as to make him proof 
against the blasts of destructive ephemeral 
thoughts which, sweeping hither and thither 
across the intellectual world, press for a mo- 
ment and are gone, — before the impact of 
such only a great man stays always rooted. 



Henry A. Wise Wood. 



New York City, 
October 27, 19 19. 



PREFACE 

This book makes no pretence either to deal 
adequately with the life of a great American, 
or with the important Preparedness movement 
of which he has been the conspicuous leader. 
These will no doubt be the subjects of careful 
study and of extended treatment by competent 
historians in the near future. The writer has 
found it a congenial task to devote a portion 
of his vacation to putting the salient facts in 
order. The book has almost written itself, 
for the attempt has been, so far as possible, 
to substitute for his own words the statements 
of those who by reason of their direct relation 
to the events recorded speak with the greatest 
authority. 

W. H. H. 

Ann Arbor, Michigan, 
September i, 19 19. 



23 



CONTENTS 





PART I 






THE SOLDIER AND ADMINISTRATOR 




CHAPTER 




PAGB 




Introduction 


31 


I.- 


-An American Soldier 


42 


II.- 


-The Builder of Republics 


60 


III- 


-Roosevelt's Estimate of Wood 


80 



PART II 
PROPHET AND ORGANIZER OF PREPAREDNESS 

IV. — Organizing the American Army for 

Defence ..... 103 

V. — The Fight against Pacifism . .129 

VI. — The Darkening of Counsel . . 151 

VII. — " Broomstick Preparedness " . . 174 

VIII. — At War 202 

IX. — A Soldier's Reward . . . 233 

Addendum ..... 255 

Partial List of Writings of Gen- 
eral Leonard Wood . . . 269 

Books and Articles Concerning 
General Leonard Wood . .271 
25 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

PAGE 

Leonard Wood .... Frontispiece 

General and Mrs. Wood and Family . . 36 '-^^ 

Leonard Wood l\ 1885 .... 44^-^^ 

General Wheeler, General Wood, and 

Colonel Roosevelt in Cuba . . 52^"^^ 

General Wood in 1916 .... 64^^^^ 

General and Mrs. Wood at Governor's 

Island 104^^^ 

General Wood at Plattsburg . . . 132^^-^' 

Mayor Mitchel and General Wood Review- 
ing Parade of the Alaska Soldiers at 
New York City Hall .... 146^^^^ 

Charles E. Hughes and General Wood at 

Plattsburg 160^ 

General Wood and Secretary Garrison at ^ 

Dayton, Ohio, During the Flood . . 166 

Letter to Wood from Colonel Roosevelt . 204 

General Wood in 1918 .... 216 

General Wood and Admiral Usher . . 236 ^ 



27 



LEONARD WOOD 



INTRODUCTION 

The historian of the future will be compelled 
to study as one of the dominating factors in 
the Worid War that bitter struggle of the 
advocates of national defence against the 
hosts of pacifism, the later phases of which 
struggle have become known in the United 
States as the Preparedness movement. A 
competent judge has said, "Nothing of the 
kind, and certainly nothing of equal extent, 
has been known in this or in any other coun- 
try. " The main object of the preparedness 
men, which was to provide for their country 
an adequate national defence before its in- 
volvement in war, was not to be crowned with 
success; but the salutary effect of the move- 
ment upon the morale of the nation through 
education to meet responsibilities when the 
storm should break, has been nothing less 
than overwhelming and was a prime factor in 
the final triumph of the Allies. 

31 



32 Leonard Wood 

If it is true, as is now generally admitted, 
that America's participation was necessary 
for the winning of the war, it follows that the 
eleven months of indecision and note-writing 
which followed the sinking of the Lusitania, 
and the additional seventeen months which 
separated our official entry upon our respon- 
sibilities from our effective participation — 
two and one third years in all — cost the lives 
of hundreds of thousands of brave men in the 
AlHed armies, an amount of treasure which 
can scarcely be computed, and perhaps most 
important of all, it brought about that slow 
disintegration of morale within the Allied 
countries which is the direct consequence of 
exhaustion and discouragement and manifests 
itself by the running amuck of the disorderly 
elements of the proletariat. These new horrors, 
while bearing most heavily upon our Allies 
who have borne the burden and heat of the 
conflict, are now menacing the peace and 
prosperity of the entire world; and it is clear 
that they might all have been avoided. 

The unfortunate discussion which has now 
developed over the question which nation won 



Introduction 33 

the war — a discussion entirely futile since all 
were necessary — has thus far overlooked the 
vitally important antecedent question of which 
nation lost the war for the Allies during the 
first two and a half years of the struggle. It 
is as true of support of war effort as of the 
military campaigns that morale is three 
fourths, and actual physical effort one fourth; 
and it would be easy to show that President 
Wilson's deadening repression of every pa- 
triotic sentiment, and his eagerness to launch 
one peace without victory movement after 
another, again and again blocked the military 
efforts of the Allied Powers. The complete 
breakdown of the Allies' Balkan policy must 
be studied with this in mind, as must also the 
long delay of Great Britain to take the stran- 
gle hold and vigorously enforce a blockade 
against the enemy. This delay was occasioned 
largely through fear of giving offence to the 
American Government, and to it is to be 
charged therefore the great military successes 
of Germany during the opening years of the 
war. Throughout this period the President 
was addressing to the British Government 



34 Leonard Wood 

vigorous notes of protest against the restric- 
tions which were put upon American trade, 
meanwhile negotiating with the BerUn Gov- 
ernment in an effort to aboHsh all blockade and 
set up the German doctrine of Freedom of the 
Seas. Had the British Government but felt 
free to enforce the blockade in the years 19 14 
and 191 5, as it did later, the great crisis of 
19 1 7 which resulted from submarine successes, 
and the military crisis of the spring of 1918, 
could hardly have occurred. Had we in 
America through preparedness in season been 
able to apply our military force in six months, 
instead of seventeen months, after our ad- 
mission that we were at war, the end must 
have come in the defeat of Germany at least 
a full year before the date of the signing of the 
armistice. 

The American Preparedness movement and 
the British had many points in common. 
Entrusting its defence to a dominant navy, the 
British Government had adopted the policy of 
maintaining no army of importance at home; 
but the very obvious menace which was rearing 
its head in Germany had within the last dec- 



Introduction 35 

ade before the war given the alarm to a few 
far-seeing statesmen and military men. Seven 
years before the war broke, that great British 
soldier, Field Marshal Earl Roberts, the hero 
of Kabul and Kandahar, threw age-long mili- 
tary traditions to the winds and travelled up 
and down the land sounding the warning to 
"prepare or perish. " His warnings were re- 
sented by the pacifist ministry then in power, 
and were apparently but little heeded by the 
common people. The Minister of State for 
War administered a rebuke which was accom- 
panied by a threat to take away the Field 
Marshal's pension if he did not desist from 
his crusade. For such an unusual departure 
from age-long tradition as that made by Earl 
Roberts, though one which time has fully 
justified, a courage was required far greater 
than that which leads men to face the cannon 
in battle. 

This fearless course of Lord Roberts in 
England was paralleled in the United States 
by that of General Leonard Wood, who was 
likewise the ranking general in the army and 
the most distinguished soldier in the coun- 



3^ Leonard Wood 

try. Both these great commanders had been 
at the German manoeuvres of 1902, where 
they watched the rehearsal in practice of the 
most perfect mihtary machine that the world 
had ever seen. ' * Wood, ' ' said Roberts, ' * what 
are our countries to do when that splendid 
military machine is directed against us?" 
Each returned to warn his country at whatever 
cost to himself. In each case the warning was 
imheeded and bitterly resented by the pacifist 
Government in power. 

Soldier as he is. General Wood has kept his 
temper and, no matter under what provoca- 
tion, he has never been led into criticism of his 
Commander-in-Chief; but neither has he been 
coerced by threats or intimidation from telling 
the stark truth concerning the peril that has 
faced his country. No one not himself a 
commander of troops is likely in any degree 
to be able to measure the depths of the Gen- 
eral's heart-breaking disappointment when 
upon the eve of embarking for the front with 
the crack division which he had trained, the 
order was received relieving him of his com- 
mand and aiming to place him on the shelf at 




I Wallinger Co 



General and Mrs. Wood and family 



Introduction 37 

a deserted military post. At this juncture 
public opinion became audible in so angry a 
tone that the order had to be modified and the 
General permitted to exercise his genius in 
training a second division for field service. 
This second splendid unit was trained and 
ready to leave for the front when hostili- 
ties were terminated by the signing of the 

armistice. 

The proponents of preparedness have always 
made their fight under most serious handicaps. 
It is peculiar to humanity to accept of two 
programmes that one which is the more agree- 
able. Our wishes are almost inevitably the 
father to our thoughts and beliefs. The siren 
voice of pacifism tells us that we are secure in 
a soft and easy existence with leisure for high 
thinking and for boundless material prosperity. 
Why should we resort to stern self-sacrifice 
and turn our thoughts even for a moment to 
such base objects as preparing to destroy the 
lives of our fellow-men made in the image 
of God? '*It is wicked"; they say, "it is 
the militarism of a sordid Europe above 
which we have risen in our famed American 



38 Leonard Wood 

idealism"; and a picture is painted of a 
future Utopia of which no evidence has yet 
been seen. 

If, in addition, the Government is actively 
engaged in developing the propaganda of 
pacifism, it becomes invested with the prestige 
of legality, and Americans are a law-abiding 
people who expect to follow the lead of their 
Government in all things. No one who has 
studied carefully the situation, or who has 
read with any fullness the press comments 
during the days of suspense which followed 
the sinking of the Lusitania, can doubt that 
if, instead of his "too proud to fight" address, 
President Wilson had spoken a word of cour- 
age and determination, the vast majority of 
his countrymen would have rallied loyally 
behind him in a declaration of war upon 
Germany. 

No less important as a factor in the great 
struggle to raise the public morale has been 
that mass psychology of the people which is 
developed by mass action through association, 
and which responds to stimulation — organi- 
zation. Once a stand has been taken, the pride 



Introduction 39 

of consistency and firmness is impelling against 
any change of mental attitude. Hence the 
side which first occupies the field with propa- 
ganda is, quite independent of the strength 
of its arguments (provided counter arguments 
are not forthcoming), almost certain to prevail 
because of the mind becoming committed and 
so closed to argument. The organized peace 
societies were first in the field, and they were, 
moreover, far better financed throughout 
than were the defence organizations which so 
tardily followed them. Moreover, such appeal 
to the emotions as they indulged in lent itself 
readily to popular oratory, against which the 
appeal to reason of sober statements can 
hardjy be expected to prevail if abundant time 
for deliberation is not found. 

It was the impelling object-lessons of the 
war itself during those years when we were 
shielded by the Allies, confirming as they did 
the arguments of the preparedness men and 
refuting the shallow prattlings of the pacifist 
preachments, which wrought those profound 
changes in the national morale which now 
appear so remarkable. In inculcating these 



40 Leonard Wood 



above j^- ;:':rrr . ; Ir:: : 

z'zr .--iriT-:^- 1;t1 7 :s, and : T 

7: : : :he vocalized coni:: :; 
--_mi- ; Assodatei i' :he c 

c: Thr r: .irii riders C-irirg :hr ^ 
can W^. zz~ - : : 

:: Z)i-:~i ^nd Jooa'han. Cu: ^ : 
niisT c: the crisis wj; 



Ci i- --»_*^, Ck *_ - 



^--^j. '_rj. 



1'." a? they "^er 14.. The 

::\:-r:ti.::::M'i " as 

:::::: -1 fuU 

- be found for full 

' :i:e Utc^jian proposals of 

:h 5 rrtu :h ' : : rr propa- 



' jLoiation; 
e : 'g of 



'-r»ll K,xy 



CHAPTER I 

AN AMERICAN SOLDIER 

A characteristic incident — Wood's early life — He enters the army 
as a contract surgeon — He takes part in Lawton's expedition 
against Geronimo — Takes command of the infantry when no 
line officers are left — Is given the Congressional Medal of 
Honor — Ordered to Washington to become attending surgeon 
to President Cleveland — Meets Theodore Roosevelt — Wood 
organizes the "Rough Riders" and becomes Colonel of 
Volunteers — The battle of Las Guasimas — Commands a 
brigade at battle of San Juan Hill — Becomes Governor of 
Santiago Province — Cleaning a pest-ridden city — The 
r^eneration of a province — With one sentry the General 
suppresses a riot. 

When General Wood held the post of Chief 
of Staff of the United States Army, the highest 
nosition in the service, it is reported that a 
lanky Western fellow whose gait proclaimed 
that he had spent his life in the saddle wan- 
dered into the War Department. 

"Who was that bull -bison who dashed past 
me and bolted through that door as if it 
hadn't any business bein' in the way?" he 
inquired. 



An American Soldier 43 

"That was General Wood," solemnly replied 
the doorkeeper. 

"He covers the ground mighty decided," 
remarked the saddle man. "Wonder if he's 
any relative of Doc Wood — Doc Len Wood, 
who used to be with the Fourth Cavahy in 
Arizona, and went with the Rough Riders 
to Cuby, and afterward President IVIcKinley 
made him Governor." 

"That was the General Wood himself," 
replied the doorkeeper. 

"You're guyin' me," said the Westerner. 
"Maybe you think I don't know Len Wood. 
Waal, I do then. I served in the Fourth 
Cavalr>^ through the Geronimo campaign 
when Wood got his breakin' in— a lean, clean- 
cut, yellow-white-headed contract doctor; but 
he made a go of it, by gosh ! He wasn't much 
to look at, but we soon caught on that what 
little stuffin' there was in him was all right, 
and before he was with us long, there wasn't a 
man could best him. Doc was always right 
on hand whenever there was a man to be 
pulled through. We come to think a powerful 
lot of Len Wood, back there in '86. You 



44 Leonard Wood 

never could get talk enough out of him to call 
it answerin' back, but whenever it was doin'' 
instead of talkin\ he was front, rear, and both 
flanks. He had an eye in his head that you 
didn't want to have hit you if you wasn't 
satisfied to have it see clean through." He 
paused abruptly and settled back against the 
wall, for the door fiew open and General Wood 
emerged, tall, massive, with deep chest and 
powerful shoulders, and quick and elastic in 
every motion. 

As he passed the old soldier the General 
stopped and extending his hand said quietly, 
"Hello, Bill, what brings you here?" 

And the writer in the Independent who has 
put the incident on record adds truly, "It 
was characteristic of the man. He is cordial, 
democratic, and as charming as a man as he is 
energetic as a soldier." The incident shows, 
what is confirmed by pictures, that the power- 
ful physique of the General, that makes him 
conspicuous in any assembly, has been largely 
developed while he has been making his career. 

Though bom in i860 at Winchester, New 
Hampshire, Leonard Wood grew up at Pocas- 



^tR^. 




Anderson Photo Co 



Leonard Wood in 1885 



An American Soldier 45 

set on Cape Cod, a little village only about 
fifteen miles from Plymouth Rock, where his 
ancestors had landed in 1620. The boy grew 
up with all the Cape Codder's love of the sea, 
and his early ambition was to enter the United 
States Navy. He became expert in the hand- 
ling of small boats and loved most of all to sail 
his light craft in stormy weather. 

Wood's father, a veteran of the Civil War, 
was a country doctor of small means, and 
with the aid of a hard-earned scholarship the 
boy made his way through college by tutoring 
those students who were more favored than he 
in this world's goods. In 1884 he received 
his diploma from the Harvard University 
Medical School as Doctor of Medicine. After 
a year and a half of practice as interne in 
the Boston City Hospital, and eight months' 
practice in the city, he succumbed to the 
strong impulse to get into the service of his 
country and took examinations for the position 
of army surgeon. 

Wood passed second in the examination in a 
class of fifty-nine, and there being no vacancy 
at the time available, he gladly volunteered 



46 Leonard Wood 

for the position of contract surgeon with the 
expedition under Captain H. W. Lawton 
which was just then starting out to capture 
hostile Apaches under the notorious chief 
Geronimo. It was this Captain Lawton who 
rose from the ranks to be Major General 
in the Regular Army, and who was later killed 
in the Philippine campaign greatly beloved 
throughout the service. 

Lawton's expedition against Geronimo 
crossed the border into the provinces of Sonora 
and Chihuahua in Old Mexico, and, in follow- 
ing the wily Geronimo and his band until all 
were either captured or had surrendered, the 
command travelled in all more than two 
thousand miles over broken and generally 
desert coimtry. The region is a volcanic 
plateau with ranges of broken mountains 
separated by caflons and almost devoid of 
water. The heat was so intense that the 
hands could not be held against the surface of 
the rocks or upon the metal parts of the rifles. 
This Mexican wilderness so new to the troopers 
had been gone over almost inch by inch by the 
Apaches, who could moreover support life 



An American Soldier 47 

on roots, mice and rats, whereas the soldiers' 
provisions had to be brought in on pack ani- 
mals. The party consisted of fifty soldiers 
and twenty Indian scouts with officers, but the 
majority in the command were used up and 
left behind long before the chase had ended. 
Lawton and Wood were the only officers who 
went through the entire campaign, and after 
the infantry had been left without any line 
officers, Wood was at his own request given 
the command in addition to performing his 
duties as surgeon. On one occasion he trav- 
elled one hundred and thirty-six miles in 
thirty-six hours, half of it on foot and half on 
horseback. He walked with the scouts all 
day, rode seventy miles with dispatches the 
following night, and next morning took his 
place with the marching column. 

During his services in this, his initial cam- 
paign, Wood was made first lieutenant and 
assistant surgeon in the Regular Army, and 
for distinguished gallantry in service was 
awarded by Congress the coveted Aledal of 
Honor, the American equivalent of the British 
Victoria Cross. Five years later (January 6, 



48 Leonard Wood 

1 891) he was commissioned a captain. In a 
report to General Miles, Captain Lawton 
wrote in 1894: 

** Concerning Dr. Leonard Wood, I can only 
repeat what I have before reported officially, 
and what I have said to you; that his ser- 
vices during that trying campaign were of 
the highest order. I speak particularly of 
services other than those devolving upon 
him as a medical officer ; services as a combat 
or line officer, voluntarily performed. He 
sought the most difficult and dangerous 
work, and by his determination and courage 
rendered a successful issue in the campaign 
possible." 

Later, in a letter to the Governor of Massa- 
chusetts, Lawton wrote: 

" I served through the War of the Rebel- 
lion, and in many battles, but in no instance 
do I remember such devotion to duty or 
such an example of courage and persever- 
ance. It was mainly due to Captain Wood's 



An American Soldier 49 

loyalty and resolution that the expedition 
was successful. He will be a credit to his 
State in any capacity of soldierly duty." 

In endorsing Colonel Lawton's recommenda- 
tion of Captain Wood, General Miles, com- 
manding the department, wrote: 

' ' I now most earnestly renew the recom- 
mendation, calling especial attention to the 
letter of Colonel Lawton, which describes 
one of the most laborious, persistent, and 
heroic campaigns in which men were ever 
engaged and the fact that Captain Leonard 
Wood, Assistant Surgeon, volunteered to 
perform the extraordinarily hazardous and 
dangerous service is creditable to him in 
the highest degree. For his gallantry on 
the 13th of July in the surprise and cap- 
ture of Geronimo's camp, I recommend 
he be bre vetted for his services on that 
date." 

Captain Wood remained for some years with 
the army in the Southwest, taking part in other 



50 Leonard Wood 

stirring frontier work, which included a dash 
after the "Apache Kid" and a hehographic 
survey of sections of Arizona. He was then 
ordered to Washington, where he became the 
attending surgeon at the White House during 
Cleveland's and a portion of McKinley's ad- 
ministration. Here he was in close confiden- 
tial relations with two presidents and had quite 
unusual opportunities to learn something of 
national politics and of the duties and respon- 
sibilities of the Chief Executive. It was in 
his capacity as surgeon to the President that 
two years before the outbreak of the Spanish- 
American War Wood first met Theodore 
Roosevelt at a dinner in Washington, and at 
once entered upon that close personal friend- 
ship which profoundly affected the lives of 
both these strenuous Americans. This close 
association of two strong men, fraught as it 
was with so much of good to their country, is 
unique in the nation's history. Both men saw 
clearly the impending conflict with Spain, 
and both planned to bear a part in the war. 
As Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Roosevelt 
was able to bring about those essential reforms 



An American Soldier 51 

which, taken in time, had so much to do with 
our success when the trial came. 

Unprepared on the mihtary side, as the 
country was when the war broke, Senator 
Warren of Montana better than most men at 
the Capitol knew the great West and the 
importance of utilizing its men hardened to 
outdoor life. He was able to secure from Con- 
gress the authorization for the raising of three 
regiments of volunteer cavalry. The first of 
these, and the only one which saw service in 
Cuba was organized by Wood with Roosevelt's 
assistance and became known as the "Rough 
Riders." The splendid record of this unit is 
such recent history and so well known as to- 
need no repetition here. What is less familiar 
is the remarkable way in which the regiment 
was organized, equipped, brought to the port 
of debarkation, embarked and landed in Cuba, 
and put through two offensive battles — all 
within sixty days. This was a work of genius 
which depended upon Wood's knowing in 
advance where the necessary articles of equip- 
ment were to be found, how to substitute for 
them when they were not available, as well as 



52 Leonard Wood 

upon his tireless energy, although it also de- 
pended in no small measure upon his personal 
friendship with the Secretary of War which 
permitted him to cut the endless red tape 
which hampered all our movements. 

It is a common error to suppose that Wood 
was greatly favored by fortune in his appoint- 
ment to the command of the regiment. As a 
matter of fact, he had for years been studying 
in preparation for line duty. It was because of 
strong recommendations made by such fight- 
ing generals as Lawton, For sy the, Graham, and 
others of the regular service that Secretary 
Alger gave him the commission. 

In the earlier of the two actions in which the 
regiment fought, the battle of Las Guasimas, 
General S. B. M. Young commanded the 
Second Cavalry Brigade which included the 
Rough Riders. In his report General Young 
said : 

" I cannot speak too highly of the efficient 
manner in which Colonel Wood handled his 
regiment and of his magnificent behavior on 
the field. . . . Both Colonel Wood and 




)U. & u. 
General Wheeler, General Wood, and Colonel Roosevelt in Cuba 



An American Soldier 53 

Lieutenant Colonel Roosevelt disdained to 
take advantage of shelter or cover from the 
enemy's fire while any of their men remained 
exposed to it — an error of judgment, but 
happily on the heroic side." 

Before the later and more general fight- 
ing about San Juan hill, which ended in the 
surrender of Santiago, General Young was 
stricken down with fever, and as a consequence 
Wood was placed in command of the Cavalry 
Brigade, Roosevelt succeeding to the com- 
mand of the Rough Riders. The division 
commander, General Joe Wheeler, in his report 
of the battle said, "Too much credit cannot be 
given to the gallant brigade commanders, 
General Wood, etc." The corps commander 
reported: "The following officers were con- 
spicuous for their bravery and handled their 
troops so well I desire to recommend them for 
promotion : . . . Colonel Wood to be briga- 
dier general, etc." Later he reported, "I 
think General Wood by far the best man to 
leave in command of the city of Santiago, and 
perhaps of the whole district." 



54 Leonard Wood 

The command of the city and province of 
Santiago brought in a few months the advance 
in rank to Major General of Volunteers in rec- 
ognition of his exceptional service there. The 
story of how General Wood cleaned up Santi- 
ago is one that Americans are justly proud of, 
for it shows what American energy when com- 
bined with genius for administration can ac- 
complish even under the most discouraging 
conditions. Before the Spaniards had been 
besieged in this city of more than forty thou- 
sand inhabitants, it had been notorious as a 
plague spot. It had been said of it by an old 
merchant captain that ' ' it could be smelt ten 
miles at sea." 

When General Wood was first placed in 
charge, the city had been under siege with 
a considerable Spanish army in occupation. 
Bodies of the dead lay in the streets with vul- 
tures feasting on the carrion. The inhabitants 
were starving, and women stretched gaunt 
arms from the windows begging for food. 
Little naked children, their distended ab- 
domens telling of the famine, crawled under 
the legs of the horses and appealed for crusts. 



An American Soldier 55 

A British writer who was an eye-witness said 
in the Nineteenth Century : 

"If ever in this worid the extraordinary 
man, the man of destiny, the man of pre- 
eminent powers and resource, was needed, 
it was in Santiago de Cuba during the latter 
part of July , 1 898 . The occasion demanded 
first a physician to deal with the tremendous 
sanitary needs; then a soldier, to suppress 
turbulence and effect a quick restoration of 
law and order; and, finally, a statesman, to 
re-establish and perfect a Civil Government. 
In General Wood was found a man who, by 
nature, education, and experience, combined 
in himself a generous share of the special 
skill of all these three. By special education 
and subsequent practice he was a physician; 
by practice and incidental education, added 
to a natural bent, he was a soldier and a 
law-giver." 

After four months of American rule, the 
people had been rescued from starvation, one 
of the foulest cities on earth had been trans- 



56 Leonard Wood 

formed into one of the cleanest, the average 
daily death rate had been reduced from two 
hundred to ten, street and road improvement 
was proceeding apace, enormous reductions 
of expenses had taken place, the prisons had 
been cleared of persons held for trivial of- 
fences without trial, and had been in addition 
thoroughly cleaned, courts had been reformed, 
the press made free, business had recovered 
and was full of confidence. 

The British observer who has already been 
quoted says: 

"This unparalleled regeneration had been 
wrought, not by a host of men native to the 
locality, and occupying offices long estab- 
lished, and enjoying an official prestige, 
but by an American Brigadier General of 
Volunteers, a stranger to the place and the 
people, embarked in the work on a moment's 
notice, and having for his immediate aids 
only a few fellow army officers, some of 
whom had been out of West Point less than 
two years, and all of whom were as new to 
the situation as himself. It was the tour 



An American Soldier 57 

de Jorce of a man of genius ; for in the harder, 
more fundamental of the tasks that con- 
fronted him here General Wood had no 
previous experience." 

The General himself penetrated into the 
noisome places where pestilence hovered, and 
his officers and men took their cue from the 
Chief. He came in touch with all classes of the 
population and daily sat in judgment on trivial 
as well as more serious cases until a proper 
system of courts was set up and able to dis- 
pense judgment. Taken down with the Calen- 
turay or Cuban fever, a report came in of a 
bloody riot in which the newly established 
rural police and a body of negro soldiers had 
been involved. He was up at once and spent 
hours at the telephone conducting the investi- 
gation, and the next day he journeyed by train 
to the scene of the trouble to pursue his ex- 
amination further. 

Feeling between the Cubans and the Span- 
iards who had so recently been their tyran- 
nical masters was naturally most bitter on 
the island. One evening a mob of several 



58 Leonard Wood 

hundred Cubans stormed the Spanish Club on 
the Plaza de Armas j using bricks and stones. 
The General was working late in his office in 
the palace across the Plaza with a single sentry 
on duty. A man rushed up with the cry, 
"Where's the General, quick?" Before the 
sentry could report, the General had come out 
carrying his riding whip and replied, "I have 
heard the row. We will go over and stop it." 
Crossing the square with the one American 
soldier, the General said quietly, "Just shove 
them back, sentry." The soldier swung his 
rifle and the way was cleared in front of the 
door, after which the General gave the order, 
"Now shoot the first man who places his foot 
upon that step," and went back to his office. 
The report upon this incident says, "Within 
an hour the mob had dispersed, subdued by 
two men, one rifle, and a riding whip. And 
the lesson is still kept in good memory." 

General Wood paid for his fearlessness in 
going about in fever-infested portions of the 
city by being struck down by fellow fever in 
1898. When in the spring of 1899 he left 
Santiago for a brief visit to the United States, 



An American Soldier 59 

the people of the city presented him with a 
testimonial engrossed in Spanish which trans- 
lated reads in part: 

"The people of the City of Santiago de 

/uba to General Leonard Wood . . . the 

greatest of all your successes is to have won 

the confidence and the esteem of a people in 

trouble." 



CHAPTER II 

THE BUILDER OF REPUBLICS 

Military Governor of Cuba — Gains good-will of the Catholic 
Church — Wood's modest summary of his work — The scourge 
of yellow fever — The fever eradicated — A Cuban republic 
set up — Secretary Root's appraisal of Wood — The Rathbone 
charges — Appointed civil governor of Aloro Province in the 
Philippines — His studies en route — The prejudice against 
him in the army — Studying the Moros upon the ground — 
War with the Datu AH — Fierce battle in a volcanic crater — 
A congressional inquiry — Changed feeling in the army — 
Made grand officer of the Legion of Honor. 

The remarkable success which had been 
achieved by General Wood as Governor of 
the Province of Santiago led to his appoint- 
ment as Military Governor of Cuba, in which 
office, as a result of centuries of misrule, vast 
problems of reform had to be taken up and 
solved. None of these were more delicate for 
a Protestant Governor to handle than the 
questions concerning the Catholic Church, 
which was established here in power as it was 

in every other Spanish coloiiy. It is a tribute 

60 



The Builder of Republics 6i 

no less to the firmness than to the tact of the 
Governor that when he was stricken down 
with typhoid fever, the Bishop of Havana led 
the people of the island in solicitous interest 
and had prayers offered in the churches 
throughout the island for his recovery. 

General Wood was Military Governor of 
Cuba from December 12, 1899, until the trans- 
fer of the government to the Cuban Republic 
on May 20, 1902. His own modest summary 
of the transformations which had been 
wrought during this period has been pub- 
lished in volume xxi. of the Annals of the 
American Academy of Political and Social 
Science, from which article the following 
paragraphs have been taken: 

"Conditions in Santiago at the time of 
occupancy were as unfavorable as can be 
imagined. Yellow fever, pernicious mala- 
ria, and intestinal fevers were all prevalent 
to an alarming extent. The city and sur- 
rounding country was full of sick Spanish 
soldiers, starving Cubans, and the sick of 
our army. The sanitary conditions were 



62 Leonard Wood 

indescribably bad. There was little or no 
water available and the conditions were 
such as can be imagined to exist in a tropi- 
cal city following a siege and capture in the 
most unhealthy season of the year. . . . 

"In October the Spanish garrison, con- 
sisting of some twelve thousand men, was 
withdrawn from the northwestern portion 
of the Province. Upon their withdrawal 
it was found that smallpox was epidemic in 
most of the towns that had been occupied 
and an investigation showed that there 
were approximately three thousand cases 
of smallpox existing in the Holguin district 
and that the disease was of the malignant 
type. . . . The efforts taken were effec- 
tive in bringing the disease to a summary 
conclusion, and since this epidemic Cuba 
has been free from smallpox. . . . 

"With the stamping out of this epidemic, 
the worst features of the sanitary situation 
were removed, and affairs began to have a 
more hopeful outlook. . . . 

"Conditions were encountered in Havana 
similar to those in Santiago, but not so 



The Builder of Republics 63 

severe, as the city had not undergone a 
siege. . . ." 

Of the remarkable work of the commission 
which Wood organized imder Dr. Walter 
Reed w^th a view to the solution of the prob- 
lem of transmission of yellow fever and the 
phenomenal success which was achieved, the 
General says : 

"The work of the commission, of which 
Dr. Reed was the President and directing 
spirit, is of the greatest importance to 
humanity at large. No medical discovery 
of equal importance has been made since the 
days of vaccination; and, as time goes on, 
the immense value of the work done, prin- 
cipally by this officer and his incidental 
associates, will receive that degree of appre- 
ciation and recognition which it so justly 
deserves." 

Summarizing his report he says: 

"The Government was transferred as a 
going concern. All the public offices were 



64 Leonard Wood 

filled with competent, well- trained employ- 
ees; the island was free from debt and had 
a surplus of a million and a half dollars in 
the treasury ; was possessed of a thoroughly 
trained and efficient personnel in all depart- 
ments; completely equipped buildings for 
the transaction of public business; the ad- 
ministration of justice was free; habeas 
corpus had been put in force, police courts 
had been established; a new marriage law 
on Hues proposed by the Roman Catholic 
Bishop of Havana, giving equal rights to 
all denominations, was in operation; the 
people were governed, in all municipalities, 
by officials of their own choice elected at 
the polls; trials in Cuban courts were as 
prompt as in any State of the Union, and 
life and property were absolutely safe; 
sanitary conditions were better than those 
existing in most parts of the United States; 
yellow fever had been eradicated from the 
island ; modern systems of public education, 
including a university, high school, and 
nearly three thousand seven hundred public 
schools had been established; also well- 




lU. & u 



General Wood in IQ16 



The Builder of Republics 65 

organized departments of charities and 
public works. The island was well sup- 
plied with hospitals and asylums; beggars 
were almost unknown. A new railroad 
law had been promulgated; custom houses 
had been equipped and thoroughly es- 
tabUshed; the great question of church 
property had been settled; . . • pubHc 
order was excellent; the island possessed 
a highly organized and efficient rural 
guard; an enormous amount of pubhc 
works had been undertaken and com- 
pleted; harbors and channels were buoyed; 
old lighthouses had been thoroughly 
renovated and new ones built; in short, 
the Government as transferred was in ex- 
cellent running order. . . . The insular 
government was undertaken without a 
dollar of public money on hand, except the 
daily collection of customs and internal 
revenue, and involved the collection and 
disbursement of $57,197,140.80, during its 
existence for improvement in material con- 
ditions and the upbuilding of insular insti- 
tutions. This sum does not include the 



66 Leonard Wood 

municipal revenue, only the general insular 
revenues. 

"The work called for and accomplished 
was the building up of a Republic, in a 
country 70 per cent, of the people of which 
were illiterate ; where they had lived always 
as a military colony ; where general elections 
as we understand them were unknown; in 
fact, it was a work which called for prac- 
tically a rewriting of the administrative law 
of the land; ... in short, the establish- 
ment, in a little over three years, in a Latin 
military colony, in one of the most un- 
healthy countries of the world, of a republic 
modelled closely upon the lines of our ow^n 
great Anglo-Saxon Republic ; and the trans- 
fer to the Cuban people of the repubHc so 
established, free from debt, healthy, orderly, 
well-equipped, and with a good balance in 
the treasury. All of this work was accom- 
plished without serious friction. The island 
of Cuba was transferred to its people as 
promised, and was started on its career in 
good condition and under the most favorable 
circumstances." 



The Builder of Republics 67 

Of what this accomplishment by a young 
Major General of Volunteers with little ex- 
perience to guide him really signified, Elihu 
Root, then the Secretary of War under whose 
jurisdiction was the Insular Government, had 
this to say : 

"Out of an utterly prostrate colony a free 
repubUc was built up, the work being done 
with such signal ability, integrity, and suc- 
cess that the new nation started under more 
favorable conditions than has ever before 
been the case in any single instance among 
her fellow Spanish-American republics. 
This record stands alone in history, and the 
benefit conferred thereby on the people of 
Cuba was no greater than the honor con- 
ferred upon the people of the United 
States." 

Lord Cromer, Great Britain's greatest colo- 
nial administrator and the maker of modern 
Egypt, is reported to have said of Leonard 
Wood's work in Cuba that it was "the greatest 
piece of colonial administration in all history." 



68 Leonard Wood 

It is further reported of him that when asked 
to name the best person to succeed him in his 
difficult task, the Earl replied that the best 
man was not available since he was an Ameri- 
can citizen. 

It will hardly be supposed that this phe- 
nomenal transformation of a Spanish colony 
could have been accomplished without the 
making of powerful enemies. E. G. Rath- 
bone, the Cuban Director General of Posts, 
a friend and favorite of Mark Hanna, was 
convicted and sent to prison because of the 
extensive frauds which the Governor had 
uncovered in the postal department. Later, 
when Wood was nominated for Major General 
in the Regular Army, serious charges were 
preferred against him by Rathbone, among 
them being favoritism, bribery, libel, and 
confusion of his accounts. The matters re- 
ferred to in these charges were fully aired in an 
investigation by a committee of Congress and 
found to be without foundation. 

A year after his return from Cuba General 
Wood was entrusted by President Roosevelt 
with the difficult task of pacifying and intro- 



The Builder of Republics 69 

ducing civil government in the Moro Province 
of the PhiHppine Islands — comprising the 
greater part of the southern island of Min- 
danao and the islands of the Sulu group — a 
province inhabited throughout by slave-hold- 
ing Mohammedans and governed by Moro 
Siiltans, Panglimas, Datus, etc. The Span- 
iards when in control of the islands had been 
unable to subdue this province and had left 
there a state of lawlessness and disorder which 
bordered on chaos. The natives belonged to 
twenty different tribes scattered throughout 
a vast tropical wilderness devoid of roads and 
penetrated only for short distances from the 
coast. In explanation of our lack of success 
in pacifying the island the excuse had been 
advanced that the time was not yet ripe. As 
a matter of fact, the country was waiting for 
the right man. 

The manner of determining Wood's ap- 
pointment to this difficult post is not without 
interest. President Roosevelt had been fenc- 
ing with Wood in the White House library, 
and during a brief rest he remarked, "I have 
been wondering whom I could send to the 



70 Leonard Wood 

Philippines. There is some rough and im- 
portant work to be done out there." "Why 
not send me?" asked Wood. "Bully," re- 
sponded the strenuous President. "Go over 
and see Root about it to-night." 

Not only was it characteristic of Wood to 
volunteer for arduous and difficult service, but 
it was equally like him to study the subject 
in advance from every possible angle. On his 
way out to the islands he paid a visit to Earl 
Cromer, the man who had made modern 
Egypt, and not only gave personal examina- 
tion while en route to the methods employed 
in India, Ceylon, Java, the Straits Settle- 
ments, and in every native colony where 
colonial problems had been solved ; but he also 
collected a large library of colonial literature 
from which also he extracted the lessons taught 
by experience. 

It was only natural that an officer in the 
United States Army who was not a graduate 
of the Military Academy, who had been on 
intimate terms of association with three 
Presidents in succession, and who had made so 
sensational a rise, should be looked upon with 



The Builder of Republics 7^ 

suspicion and envy by many officers of the 
army and particularly by those who had been 
longer in the service. To a large extent these 
feelings disappeared when Wood was found 
to outmarch, outfight, and out-endure the 
hardest veteran in his command. 

Satisfied that he had absorbed what it was 
possible for him to learn from books dealing 
with the colonial government of backward 
peoples, Wood determined to continue the 
study upon the ground and said to his staff, 
"We have got to learn this country and the 
people from personal acquaintance and obser- 
vation." He at once left Manila and sailed 
for Zamboanga in Mindanao, where after un- 
packing his horse equipment only, he plunged 
into the jungle and disappeared for a month. 

On this, his first tour of the islands, the 
General met every native chief of importance, 
inspected all military posts and stations, and 
for a talk with the Governor there he paid a 
flying trip to the neighboring island of Borneo, 
where conditions were in some respects similar. 
This completed, he was ready to lay his plans 
for the future government of the island. 



72 Leonard Wood 

He met the Moros half way by incorporating 
into the government plan some of the old 
tribal customs which were not particularly 
harmful, but slavery and slave-dealing he 
determined to abolish. This decision brought 
on war with the great Datu Ali and other 
chiefs, who fortified themselves and defied the 
new government to release the slaves. The 
campaign that drove Ali out of his fort was 
the last of a series of expeditions against the 
Sulu Moros, and was led by the General him- 
self, and the troops followed the rebel until 
he was slain and his followers had surrendered 
their guns. 

One of the insurrections occurred among 
the fanatical and hitherto unconquered Tara- 
cas of Lake Lanao. The expedition against 
these robber natives which broke their power 
ended in a battle in the crater of the volcano 
Dajo. General Wood went on foot with the 
soldiers over mountains and through tropical 
jungles faring exactly as they did. He accom- 
panied the assaulting column, though leaving 
to the commanding officer both the direction 
of and full credit for the victory. In this 



The Builder of Republics 73 

assault the troops had to climb a volcano 2100 
feet in height, having slopes of sliding ma- 
terials and with the last 500 feet inclined at 
an angle of fifty degrees. The slopes were 
timbered and crossed by lava ridges and the 
artillery had to be raised 300 feet by block and 
tackle. The fanatical robber Moros refused 
to surrender when cornered, and in the battle 
which resulted about six hundred were killed, 
including the women, who wore trousers, 
carried weapons, and charged with the men in 
the final hand-to-hand melee. These natives 
sought death in battle against Christians to 
gain their entry into Paradise, and native boys 
were used as shields for protection. 

Sensational reports, which had emanated, 
not from the island of Sulu but from Manila, 
and which charged the punitive expedition 
with inhumanity, brought an inquiry from 
Congress, but one which resulted in complete 
exoneration and proved that the General had 
exercised unusual patience with a view to 
avoid bloodshed if it were possible. It was 
entirely characteristic of General Wood that 
when he learned of the charges preferred he at 



74 Leonard Wood 

once cabled to the Department, "I assume 
entire responsibility for action of the troops 
in every particular." As the General once 
said, "My loyalty runs first to the man under 
me who is least able to defend himself." 

Major Hugh L. Scott, who afterwards 
became General and Chief of Staff, had re- 
cently returned from the island and was 
familiar with the conditions there. He testi- 
fied before the Congressional committee: 

"General Wood, with the troops, spent 
the greater part of the day far from water 
under a tropical sun, waiting with the utmost 
patience on the dilatory tactics of the sav- 
ages in order to accomplish the subjugation 
of this band without bloodshed. . . . 

"The policy of General Wood in that 
archipelago has always been to bring about 
peace and order as gently and with as little 
loss of life as possible. . . . 

"It is not conceivable that this policy of 
humanity, carried out in the past two years 
and a half, should now have been changed, 
as General Wood was there in person and 



The Builder of Republics 75 

no one would take more trouble to avoid 
unnecessary bloodshed than he." 

Of the mountain on which the battle oc- 
curred he said : 

"It is very steep and difficult to climb 
under most favorable circumstances, and to 
climb it successfully under fire is undoubt- 
edly a most gallant feat of arms, and unless 
great skill had been used many more lives 
would have been lost among the troops." 

An army officer returning from service in 
the Philippines made the following statement 
which has been put on record and is here 
printed to indicate how the feeling in the 
army toward General Wood had been changed 
through close association with him: 

"When Wood first came out in 1903, the 
army in the Philippines didn't know him. 
There were plenty of officers who reviled 
him as a favorite of the White House, and 
'cussed him out' for it. The worst were 



76 Leonard Wood 

the old fellows whom he had jumped, and 
the youngsters took their cue from them. 
'He was a doctor, he wasn't a soldier,' they 
said. But that didn't last long after Wood 
started in down in Mindanao. Pretty soon 
that part of the army began to realize that 
he was a hustler; that he knew a good deal 
about the soldier's game; that he did things 
and did them right; that, when he sent 
troops into the field, he went along with 
them; that, when they had to eat hard 
tack and bacon, he did it too; that, when 
there were swamps to plod through, he was 
right along with them; that, when reveille 
sounded before daybreak, he was usually up 
and dressed before us; that, when a man 
was down and out, and he happened to be 
near, he'd get off his horse and see what the 
matter was, and fix the fellow up, if he 
could; that he had a pleasant word for all 
hands, from the Colonel down to the team- 
ster or packer; that when he gave an order 
it was a sensible one, and that he didn't 
change it after it went out ; and that he re- 
membered a man who did a good piece of 



The Builder of Republics 77 

work, and showed his appreciation at every 
chance. 

"Well, the youngsters began to swear by 
Wood, and the old chaps followed, so that 
from 'cussing him out' they began to 
respect him and then to admire and love 
him. That's the word — love. It's the 
easiest thing in the world to pick a fight 
out there now by saying something against 
Wood. It is always the same when men 
come in contact with him. I don't honestly 
believe there is a man in the department 
now who wouldn't go to hell and back for 
Leonard Wood. He draws men to him, 
they feel that he is a big man. Take the 
older officers, the chaps who were soldiering 
when he was a 'kid.' They all feel that, 
while they know their business, he knows 
it a lot better than they do, and that he 
knows it by instinct, backed up by learn- 
mg. 

When General Wood returned to the United 
States, he left Mindanao the best governed 
province in the Philippines. The Moros had 



78 Leonard Wood 

been pacified and civil government set up with 
success. His work in the islands has been 
often compared to that of Kitchener, and it 
has been pointed out that if what Wood did 
in the Philippines had been accomplished in a 
British colony he would have been rewarded 
as Kitchener was. Robert Hammond Murray 
reports an English colonial official to have 
volunteered his belief that Wood would have 
gone even farther than Kitchener with equal 
opportunity, for the reason that he added to 
the British General's soldierly qualities and 
genius for administration a remarkable tact 
and statesmanship. 

General Wood was Governor of Moro Prov- 
ince from July, 1903, to April, 1906, when 
he was advanced to the command of the 
Military Department of the Philippines with 
ten thousand men under his command, a posi- 
tion which he held until 1908. 

In recognition of his work in colonial 
organization and administration in Cuba and 
the Philippines, the French Legion of Honor 
conferred upon him the next to the highest 
of its five orders, that of Grand Officer. 



The Builder of Republics 79 

This is a tribute seldom accorded to any- 
one not a Frenchman, and the honor has 
even more rarely been awarded in time of 
peace. 



CHAPTER III 

ROOSEVELT'S ESTIMATE OF WOOD 

Roosevelt and Wood planning national defence — Wood advanced 
mainly by Presidents McKinley and Taft — Wood the soldier 
— The model military administrator— Wood's hardihood and 
endurance — His love of adventure — The Geronimo experi- 
ence — Wood shares all hardships of his men — His boundless 
energy — Even justice to all — His reward the opportunity for 
service — His sensational rise due to his owe high qualities. 

It was in 1896 that Wood first met Roose- 
velt, who was then the Assistant Secretary of 
the Navy, and out of this grew an attachment 
between two strong characters, which deep- 
ened with the years. Wood was of all men 
the one that Roosevelt admired and loved. 
Almost from their first meeting they began 
planning to prepare their country for the 
struggle with Spain, which was already loom- 
ing up upon the horizon. Their later and far 
more difficult struggle for adequate national 
preparedness against the apathy and open 

80 



Roosevelt's Estimate of Wood 8i 

hostility of the Administration bound them 
together as with bonds of steel. 

There exists a widespread but quite erro- 
neous belief that Wood owes his rapid rise 
in the army — a rise without a parallel in our 
history — to appointments made by Roosevelt 
when Chief Executive of the nation. As a 
matter of fact Wood's appointment as Colonel 
and his advancements successively to Briga- 
dier General and Major General of Volun- 
teers, to Brigadier General in the Regular 
Army, as w^ell as to Governor General of Cuba, 
were all made by President McKinley as war- 
time appointments and each was dictated 
by an imperative necessity. Wood's appoint- 
ment as Chief of Staff of the Army was made 
by President Taft. The only advance in 
Wood's military career that was made by 
President Roosevelt was when he was pro- 
moted from Brigadier General to Major Gen- 
eral in the Regular Army, and this occurred 
at a time when Wood headed the list of 
brigadiers so that a failure of the President 
to make the nomination would have been 
tantamount to an expression of his disap- 



82 Leonard Wood 

proval. As Elihu Root has expressed it, 
"President Roosevelt would be called upon to 
put him out of that rank and to dissent from 
the judgment of President McKinley if he 
had failed to nominate him." 

Because of his known intimacy with Wood, 
Roosevelt seemed to realize that any advance- 
ment of the general which came from him 
would be charged by hostile critics to favor- 
itism. Roosevelt's estimates of Wood as civil 
administrator and man, as well as soldier, 
were therefore prepared with much careful dis- 
crimination. In articles which he published 
in 1899, 1902, and 1910, there is contained 
a quite remarkable expression of judgment 
on the part of one great American who knew 
another more intimately than did anyone 
else. Of Wood as a soldier he knew from 
personal association in the command of the 
Rough Riders, and in his biography he says: 

"It [the regiment] was raised, armed, 
equipped, drilled, sent on trains to Tampa, 
embarked, disembarked, and put through 
two victorious offensive — not defensive — 



Roosevelt's Estimate of Wood 83 

fights in which a third of the officers and 
one fifth of the men were killed or wounded, 
all within sixty days. It is a good record, 
and it speaks well for the men of the regi- 
ment; and it speaks well for Wood. . . • 
"Wood was an exceptional commander, 
of great power, with a remarkable gift for 
organization. Wood won his Brigadier 
Generalship by the capital way in which he 
handled his brigade in the fight and in the 
following siege. He was put in command of 
the captured city [Santiago]." 

To the Outlook of January 7, 1899, Roose- 
velt contributed a special article entitled 
"General Leonard Wood, a Model American 
Military Administrator," and from this article 
the following paragraphs have been taken: 

"What I am about to write concerning 
the great service rendered not only to Cuba, 
but to America, by Brigadier General Leon- 
ard Wood, now Military Governor of Santi- 
ago, is written very much less as a tribute 
to him than for the sake of pointing out what 



84 Leonard Wood 

an object-lesson he has given the people 
of the United States in the matter of ad- 
ministering those tropic lands in which we 
have grown to have so great an interest. . . . 

"I think most Americans realize that 
facts must be faced, and that for the present, 
and in the immediate future, we shall have, 
whether we wish it or not, to provide a 
working government, not only for Hawaii 
and Porto Rico, but for Cuba and the 
Philippines. . . . 

"What is really essential is to have first- 
class men chosen to administer these prov- 
inces, and then to give these men the 
widest possible latitude as to means and 
methods for solving the exceedingly difficult 
problems set before them. Most fortu- 
nately, we have in General Wood the exact 
type of man whom we need ; and we have in 
his work for the past four months an exact 
illustration of how the work should be done. 

"The great importance of the personal 
element in this work makes it necessary for 
me to dwell upon General Wood's qualifi- 
cations as I should not otherwise do. The 



Roosevelt's Estimate of Wood 85 

successful administrator of a tropic colony 
must ordinarily be a man of boundless 
energy and endurance; and there were prob- 
ably very few men in the army at Santiago, 
whether among the officers or in the ranks, 
who could match General Wood in either 
respect. No soldier could outwalk him, 
could live with more indifference on hard 
and scanty fare, could endure hardship 
better, or do better without sleep; no officer 
ever showed more ceaseless energy in pro- 
viding for his soldiers, in reconnoitering, in 
overseeing personally all the countless de- 
tails of Hfe in camp, in patrolHng the 
trenches at night, in seeing by personal 
inspection that the outposts were doing 
their duty, in attending personally to all 
the thousand and one things to which a 
commander should attend, and to which 
only those commanders of marked and ex- 
ceptional mental and bodily vigor are able 

to attend. 

"General Wood was a Cape Cod boy; and 
to this day there are few amusements for 
which he cares more than himself to sail a 



86 Leonard Wood 

small boat off the New England coast, 
especially in rough weather. He went 
through the Harvard Medical School in 
1881-82, and began to practice in Boston; 
but his was one of those natures which, 
especially when young, frets for adventure 
and for those hard and dangerous kinds of 
work where peril blocks the path to a 
greater reward than is offered by more 
peaceful occupations. A year after leaving 
college he joined the army as a contract sur- 
geon, and almost immediately began his 
service under General Miles in the South- 
western Territories. These were then 
harried by the terrible Apaches; and the 
army was entering on the final campaigns 
for the overthrow of Geronimo and his 
fellow renegades. No one who has not 
lived in the West can appreciate the in- 
credible, the extraordinary fatigue and 
hardship attendant upon these campaigns. 
There was not much fighting, but what 
there was, was of an exceedingly dangerous 
type; and the severity of the marches 
through the waterless mountains of Arizona, 



Roosevelt's Estimate of Wood 87 

New Mexico, and the northern regions of 
Old Mexico (whither the Apache bands 
finally retreated) were such that only men 
of iron could stand them. But the young 
contract doctor, tall, broad-chested, with 
his light-yellow hair and blue eyes, soon 
showed the stuff of which he was made. 
Hardly any of the whites, whether soldiers 
or frontiersmen, could last with him; and 
the friendly Indian trailers themselves could 
not wear him down. In such campaigns 
it soon becomes essential to push forward 
the one actually fitted for command, what- 
ever his accidental position may be; and 
Wood, although only a contract surgeon, 
finished his career against the Apaches by 
serving as commanding officer of certain of 
the detachments sent out to perform pecu- 
liarly arduous and dangerous duty; and he 
did his work so well and showed such con- 
spicuous gallantry that he won that most 
coveted of military distinctions, the medal 
of honor. On expeditions of this kind, 
where the work is so exhausting as to call 
for the last ounce of reserve strength and 



^8 Leonard Wood 

courage in the men, only a very peculiar 
and high type of officer can succeed. Wood, 
however, never called upon his men to do 
anything that he himself did not do. They 
ran no risk that he did not run ; they endured 
no hardship which he did not endure; in- 
tolerable fatigue, intolerable thirst, never- 
satisfied hunger, and the strain of unending 
watchfulness against the most cruel and 
dangerous of foes — through all this Wood 
led his men until the final hour of signal 
success. When he ended the campaigns, 
he had won the high regard of his superior 
officers, not merely for courage and en- 
durance, but for judgment and entire trust- 
worthiness. A young man who is high of 
heart, clean of life, incapable of a mean or 
ungenerous action, and bursting with the 
desire to honorably distinguish himself, 
needs only the opportunity in order to do 
good work for his country'. 

"This opportunity came to Wood with 
the outbreak of the Spanish War. I had 
seen much of him during the preceding year. 
Being myself fond of outdoor exercise. I had 



Roosevelt's Estimate of Wood 89 

found a congenial companion in a man who 
had always done his serious duties with 
the utmost conscientiousness, but who had 
found time to keep himself, even at thirty- 
seven, a first-class football player. We had 
the same ideals and the same way of look- 
ing at life ; we were fond of the same sports ; 
and, last, but not least, being men with 
families, we liked, where possible, to enjoy 
these sports in company with our small 
children. We therefore saw very much of 
each other ; and we had made our plans long 
in advance as to what we should do if war 
with Spain broke out; accordingly, he went 
as Colonel, and I was Lieutenant Colonel, 
of the Rough Riders. How well he com- 
manded his regiment is fresh in the minds 
of every one. Because of his success he was 
made Brigadier General, and at the battle 
of San Juan he commanded one of the two 
brigades which made up General Joe 
Wheeler's Cavalry Division. WTien Santi- 
ago surrendered, he was soon put in charge, 
first of the city and then of the city and 
province. 



90 Leonard Wood 

"Since then he has worked wonders. 
Both his medical and his miHtary training 
stood him in good stead. I was frequently 
in Santiago after ithe surrender, and I never 
saw Wood w^hen he was not engaged on 
some one of his multitudinous duties. He 
was personally inspecting the hospitals; he 
was personally superintending the cleaning 
of the streets; he was personally hearing the 
most important of the countless complaints 
made by Cubans against Spaniards, Span- 
iards against Cubans, and by both against 
Americans; he was personally engaged in 
working out a better system of sewerage or 
in striving to secure the return of the land- 
tillers to the soil. I do not mean that he 
ever allowed himself to be swamped by 
mere details; he is much too good an ex- 
ecutive officer not to delegate to others 
whatever can safely be delegated; but the 
extraordinary energy of the man himself 
is such that he can in person oversee and 
direct much more than is possible with the 
ordinary man. 

"To General Wood has fallen the dut}^ of 



Roosevelt's Estimate of Wood 91 

preserving order, of seeing that the best 
Cubans begin" to administer the govern- 
ment, of protecting the lives and properties 
of the Spaniards from the vengeance of their 
foes, and of securing the best hygienic con- 
ditions possible in the city; of opening the 
schools, and of endeavoring to re-establish 
agriculture and commerce in a ruined and 
desolate land. 

"The sanitary state of the city of San- 
tiago was frightful beyond belief. The 
Cuban army consisted of undisciplined, un- 
paid men on the verge of becoming mere 
bandits. The Cuban chiefs were not only 
jealous of one another, but, very naturally, 
bitterly hostile to the Spaniards who re- 
mained in the land. On the other hand, 
the men of property, not only among the 
Spaniards, but even among the Cubans, 
greatly feared the revolutionary army. 
All conditions were ripe for a period of utter 
anarchy, and under a weak, a foolish, or a 
violent man this anarchy would certainly 
have come. General Wood, by his energy, 
his firmness, his common sense, and his 



92 Leonard Wood 

moderation, has succeeded in working as 
great an improvement as was possible 
in so short a time. By degrees he has 
substituted the best Cubans he can find 
in the places both of the old Spanish offi- 
cials and of the Americans who were put 
in temporary control. He permits not 
the slightest violence either on the part 
of the American soldiers or of the inhab- 
itants; he does absolute, even justice to 
all. He shows that he thinks of him- 
self only in so far as he desires to win 
an honorable reputation for doing his 
work — and even this desire for an honor- 
able reputation, it must be remembered, 
is absolutely secondary in his mind to 
the desire that the work itself should be 
thoroughly done, let the credit go where 
it will." 

Three years later, writing in the Har- 
vard Graduates' Magazine, Roosevelt supple- 
mented the above account by a brief sum- 
mary of which the following paragraph is a 
part: 



Roosevelt's Estimate of Wood 93 

"Leonard Wood four years ago went 
down to Cuba, has served there ever since, 
has rendered services to that country of 
the kind which if performed three thousand 
years ago would have made him a hero 
mixed up with the sun god in various ways; 
a man who devoted his full life through those 
four years, who thought of nothing else, did 
nothing else, save to try to bring up the 
standard of political and social life in that 
island, to clean it physically and morally, 
to make justice even and fair in it, to found 
a school system which should be akin to our 
own, to teach the people after four centu- 
ries of misrule that there were such things 
as governmental righteousness and honesty 
and fair play for all men on their merits 
as men. He did all that. He is a man of 
slender means. He did it on his pay as an 
army officer, and as Governor of the island. 
Sixty millions of dollars passed through his 
hands, and he came out having been obliged 
to draw on his slender capital in order that 
he might come out even when he left the 
island." 



94 Leonard Wood 

In his book, The Rough Riders, Roosevelt 
wrote : 

"General Leonard Wood combines in a 
very high degree the quahties of entire 
manHness with entire uprightness and clean- 
Hness of character. He is a man of high 
ideals who scorns everything mean and base 
and who possesses those robust and hardy 
qualities of body and mind for the lack of 
which no merely negative virtue can atone. 
He is by nature a soldier of the highest 
type." 

Later, in Everybody s Magazine, the ex- 
President added: 

"What I said of Leonard Wood in The 
Rough Riders I now say with greater em- 
phasis than ever. He has shown himself 
one of the most useful and patriotic of 
American public servants, and has made 
all good Americans his debtors by what 
he has done." 



Roosevelt's Estimate of Wood 95 

In July of the year 1910, when Wood's work 
in Santiago had been followed by that remark- 
able achievement in the capacity of Governor 
General of the island, and then by the pacifi- 
cation of the Moros in the Philippines and the 
setting up of civil government there, Roose- 
velt again took up his pen in order to sum- 
marize these later achievements. In the 
Outlook he wrote in part: 

"Nearly twelve years ago, when Leonard 
Wood was acting as Governor of Santiago, 
I wrote in the Outlook about what he had 
already achieved, and what he could be 
trusted to achieve. During the intervening 
twelve years he has played a very con- 
spicuous part among the men who have 
rendered signal service to the country by 
the way in which they have enabled it to 
grapple with the duties and responsibilities 
incurred by the Spanish War. . . . 

"The share of the army in the honor roll 
is very large. The importance of work like 
that of General Bell in the Philippines, of 
General Barry in Cuba, can hardly be over- 



96 Leonard Wood 

estimated; but as a whole, of all the work of 
the army officers, the greatest in amount, and 
the greatest in variety of achievement, must 
be credited to General Wood. And, more- 
over, he has at times combined with singu- 
lar success the functions of civil adminis- 
trator and military commandant . The part 
played by the United States in Cuba has 
been one of the most honorable ever played 
by any nation in dealing with a weaker 
Power, one of the most satisfactory in all 
respects; and to General Wood more than 
to any other man is due the credit of start- 
ing this work and conducting it to a success- 
ful conclusion during the earliest and most 
difficult years. Like almost all of the men 
mentioned, as well as their colleagues. Gen- 
eral Wood of course incurred the violent 
hatred of many dishonest schemers and 
unscrupulous adventurers, and of a few 
more or less well-meaning persons who were 
misled by these schemers and adventurers; 
but it is astounding to any one acquainted 
with the facts to realize, not merely what 
he accomplished, but how he succeeded in 



Roosevelt's Estimate of Wood 97 

gaining the good will of the enormous 
majority of the men whose good will could 
be won only in honorable fashion. Span- 
iards and Cubans, Christian Filipinos and 
Moros, Catholic ecclesiastics and Protestant 
missionaries — in each case the great major- 
ity of those whose opinion was best worth 
having — grew to regard General Wood as 
their special champion and ablest friend, as 
the man who more than any other under- 
stood and sympathized with their peculiar 
needs and was anxious and able to render 
them the help they most needed. In Cuba 
he acted practically as both civil and mili- 
tary head ; and after he had been some time 
in the Philippines, very earnest pressure 
was brought to bear by many of the best 
people in the islands to have a similar posi- 
tion there created for him, so that he could 
repeat what he had done in Cuba. It was 
neither necessary nor desirable that this 
position should be created; but the widely 
expressed desire that it should be created 
was significant of the faith in the man. 
"His administration was as signally sue- 



98 Leonard Wood 

cessful in the Moro country as in Cuba. In 
each case ahke it brought in its train peace, 
an increase in material prosperity, and a 
rigid adherence to honesty as the only 
policy tolerated among officials. His oppor- 
tunity for military service has not been 
great, either in the Philippines or while he 
was the Governor of Cuba. Still, on sev- 
eral occasions he was obliged to carry on 
operations against hostile tribes of Moros, 
and in each case he did his work with skill, 
energy, and efficiency ; and, once it was done, 
he showed as much humanity in dealing 
with the vanquished as he had shown ca- 
pacity to vanquish them. In our country 
there are some kinds of successes which 
receive an altogether disproportionate finan- 
cial reward; but in no other country is the 
financial reward so small for the kind of 
service done by Leonard Wood and by the 
other men whose names I have given above. 
General Wood is an army officer with noth- 
ing but an army officer's pay, and we accept 
it as a matter of course that he should have 
received practically no pecuniary reward 



Roosevelt's Estimate of Wood 99 

for those services which he rendered in 
positions not such as an army officer usually 
occupies. There is not another big country 
in the world where he would not have re- 
ceived a substantial reward such as here no 
one even thinks of his receiving. Yet, after 
all, the reward for which he most cares is 
the opportunity to render service, and this 
opportunity has been given him once and 
again. He now stands as Chief of Staff of 
the American Army, the army in which he 
was serving in a subordinate position as 
surgeon thirteen years ago. His rise has 
been astonishing, and it has been due purely 
to his own striking qualifications and strik- 
ing achievements. Again and again he has 
rendered great service to the American 
people; and he will continue to render such 
service in the position he now holds." 



Part II 



Prophet and Organizer of 
Preparedness 



lOI 



CHAPTER IV 

ORGANIZING THE AMERICAN ARMY FOR DEFENCE 

General Wood's splendid health and vigor— Return to the United 
States to command the Department of the East — Devotes 
himself to preparing army for defence — The Massachusetts 
manoeuvres of 1909 — Encourages rifle practice in schools — 
Sounds the warning to prepare— Raised to the head of the 
army by President Taft— Regroups the army stations so as 
to resist invasion — Moves to abandon needless posts — Op- 
position aroused in Congress — "Joker" aimed at him in 
army bill — Economies introduced in the army — Advocates 
large expansion of army at reduction of cost — Attacks system 
of bureau chiefs— The Texas troop concentration of 191 1 — 
Encourages miUtary training in colleges — The idea of the 
Reserve Officers' Corps— Devises the Plattsburg Camps- 
Declares undeveloped resources useless in war. 

It was in 19 lo that Leonard Wood, his 
remarkable work in the Moro Province con- 
cluded, underwent a surgical operation upon his 
skull to remedy a serious condition resulting 
from the fracture due to a blow years before. 
This operation was successfully performed and 
less than a month thereafter he was en route 
to the Argentine as special ambassador, en- 

103 



104 Leonard Wood 

gaging daily in hard contests using the medi- 
cine ball with Admiral Stanton and his staff; 
and General Wood has since continued to 
possess that perfect health and vigor and 
that wonderful physical energy which spring 
from muscular strength when combined with 
an iron constitution. One of the strong im- 
pressions which is carried away from every 
meeting with him is a radiation of energy quite 
independent of motion and suggesting an 
enormous reserve of physical power. This 
impression is only accentuated by the rather 
noticeable lameness of the left leg due to a 
vicious kick from a mettlesome horse. The 
General's limp, especially noticeable when he 
rises to speak on the platform, entirely dis- 
appears after a little vigorous exercise, and 
few men are able to keep up with him in 
getting about on foot. 

When he returned to the United States in 
1908, General Wood was promoted to the 
command of the Eastern Department of the 
Army with headquarters at Governor's Island. 
This was at the time the most important army 
command outside the national capital. Here 




General and Mrs. Wood at Governor's Island 



Organizing the Army 105 

for the first time opportunity was found to 
devote himself to the problem of preparing 
the national defence for a war which he knew 
was certain to come upon the country in the 
not distant future. From a military point of 
view the country was in a hopeless condition 
to meet the attack of a foreign foe. When 
with Earl Roberts at the German manoeuvres 
of 1902 General Wood had had an opportunity 
to inspect the modem military machine of 
Germany, and he was under no illusion as to 
the meaning of this development of a perfected 
instrument of war by a state notoriously mili- 
taristic and ruled by an ambitious war lord. 

As commander of the Department of the 
East, he had under his observation more than 
half of the National Guard of the country, a 
body of excellent personnel but organized 
under a vicious system which was not suscept- 
ible of enforcement of rigid discipline. More- 
over, there was little opportunity for drill in 
larger units than that of the company, and 
military concentration for manoeuvres was 
something quite unknown. 

As a great object lesson both for the 



io6 Leonard Wood 

National Guard itself and for the people of 
the country, General Wood staged the Mas- 
sachusetts manoeuvres of 1909, in which 
the Atlantic Fleet of the Navy, the Tenth 
United States Cavalry, and the National 
Guards of New York, Massachusetts, New 
Jersey, and the District of Columbia all took 
part. 

The war ships were organized as two fleets, 
one that of the enemy (red), and the other 
the American (blue). These rival fleets, after 
manoeuvring off the Maine coast, met with 
the result that the American squadron was 
adjudged by the umpires to have been stra- 
tegically defeated, so that its remnants were 
forced to take refuge in the harbors of Port- 
land and Portsmouth. The troops had been 
divided into American and enemy forces co- 
operating each with its own fleet. An immense 
amount of popular interest was excited in these 
manoeuvres, which continued for five days and 
revealed glaring deficiencies as no other 
method could have done. Of the result 
General Wood said in a published magazine 
article: 



"V 



Organizing the Army 107 

"It also demonstrated to all people who 
looked at the problem from a military 
standpoint the entire inefficiency of our 
available forces to meet any sudden, well- 
organized attack, and the necessity of a 
decided enlargement of our organized militia 
and its thorough instruction and equipment. 
"The people of our country are, as a rule, 
very ignorant of the preparedness of foreign 
nations and of our own unpreparedness to 
meet effectively any aggressive action. We 
are too often told of our remarkable re- 
sources and too seldom made to understand 
our entire unpreparedness effectively and 
promptly to employ them. . . . Our 
people sit in fancied security behind our 
seacoast defences, which are excellent for 
the purpose for which they were designed, 
but the general public is unaware of the 
general limitation of these defences. The 
most they can be called upon or expected 
to do is to prevent the enemy's fleet from 
entering our harbors or lying sufficiently 
near their entrance to bombard the cities 
behind them. . . . They make the enemy's 



io8 Leonard Wood 

work more difficult. . . . Most of our 
great cities once the command of the sea 
is lost are open to land attack. . . . The 
best way to impress upon the people the 
necessity for action . . . is to demonstrate 
the facility with which an invading force 
can land and deliver successful attacks 
upon our seaboard cities. ' ' 

Another direction along which it was sought 
to arouse the people's interest in their obli- 
gation to provide for national defence, was 
through the encouragement of rifle practice 
in the public schools. Writing in 1910, Gen- 
eral Wood declared: 

"The question arises as to w^hat we can 
do through the public schools to better 
prepare our people for war, war which will 
be as unavoidable in the future as in the 
past, and which will come upon us much 
more suddenly and with greater force and 
power. We can, through the proper use of 
the public schools, do a great deal; we can 
teach our boys and young men to shoot 
straight. . . . 



Organizing the Army 109 

"In case of a war of any consequence we 
would be compelled to call to the colors 
from half a million to a million men. There 
would be no time to instruct them, for the 
oceans, under transportation conditions of 
to-day, are no longer barriers in military 
operations, but rather rapid and convenient 
means of communication, especially to the 
nation having a predominant sea-power, 
and the time to organize for defence will be 
very short. . . . 

"Preparedness for war is the strongest 
of the influences for the preservation of 
peace. . . . 

"Much as we all desire peace and wish 
by all honorable means to avoid war, war 
will come, and we owe it to our coimtry to 
take such steps as will insure reasonable 
preparedness. 

"We are, as a people, too conscious of our 
latent, but entirely undeveloped, military 
resources, and too much surfeited with 
what has been well called the 'valor of 
ignorance,* and it is most important, in 
view of our rapidly extending sphere of 



no Leonard Wood 

influence, that we give some heed to the 
attainment of a state of preparedness to 
meet the grave conditions hable to confront 
us as a result of our new responsibiUty. " 

A little later he added : 

"When war comes to this country again 
. . . the patriotic, able-bodied American 
will, as in the past, feel himself obligated 
the moment war is declared to offer his 
services to the Government. 

"If he has had no previous military 
training in the army or in the National 
Guard, he is not going to be of much use; 
in fact, of no use in the beginning. He will 
be more of a burden than a benefit, a handi- 
cap instead of a help, to the force in which 
he is enrolled. 

"He will have to be trained, instructed, 
taught, and the exigencies of the occasion 
may be such that he will be rushed into 
battle before he knows anything of what a 
soldier should know. . . . 

"The encouragement of schoolboys in 



Organizing the Army 1 1 1 

the use of the rifle on official ranges and 
under competent instruction is of vast 
importance to the nation. . . . 

" Far from making these boys disposed for 
war, the instruction which they receive 
... is calculated to cause them to appre- 
ciate, much more than anyone unlearned 
in the use of modem weapons could possibly 
appreciate, the horrors involved in war. 

"Instead of opposing instruction of this 
kind, every parent and all school authorities 
should encourage it, for the better prepared 
our people are in the way of instruction in 
the use of the rifle and readiness to perform 
their duty in time of war, the less likely we 
are to have wars, and, if we have them, the 
quicker they will be over and the smaller 
will be our losses. Nothing makes war so 
costly as lack of preparedness, and nothing 
makes it so probable as to have this lack of 
preparation apparent and generally known. 
We should impress upon our youth the fact 
that they are all under a patriotic obligation 
to avail themselves of every opportimity to 
fit themselves to discharge the duty of a 



112 Leonard Wood 

soldier in time of war. The nation in which 
this is lost sight of is marked for disaster, 
or, at least, for very great and unnecessary 
sacrifices and losses in case of war. " 

When in 19 lo General Wood was placed at 
the head of the army as the Chief of Staff, his 
opportunities for fitting the American mili- 
tary forces for war were greatly enlarged, and 
he thereupon immediately took up plans for a 
thorough regrouping of the stations of the 
army with definite reference to the possibili- 
ties of defence against invasion of the country. 

During the period of the development of 
the Great West, it had been necessary to pro- 
tect frontier districts from possible attack by 
hostile Indians, for which purpose a system 
of frontier posts generally known as forts had 
been estabhshed. As their need diminished 
increasingly with the country's rising pros- 
perity and its extension of railroad communi- 
cation, instead of being abandoned, these posts 
had, curiously enough, been rather generally 
improved as military stations through the 
expenditure of large sums of money upon 



Organizing the Army 113 

buildings and equipment. The army post 
brought business to the near-lying urban 
communities, and it was but natural that 
powerful influences should be brought to bear 
upon Congressmen for the purpose not only of 
maintaining these now useless posts, but also 
of enlarging and strengthening them still 
further. It was exceedingly difficult to interest 
the people in the necessity of any reform in this 
direction, for the reason that our citizens did 
not see the danger to the future safety of the 
country which the system involved. Not- 
withstanding these political difficulties the 
new Chief of Staff did not hesitate to attack 
the problem vigorously and advocate the 
reform by every proper means. In an article 
which was published in the Independent in 
191 2 he declared: 

"A sound military policy demands the 
concentration of larger tactical units in 
strategic areas as an urgent necessity; as a 
measure tending not only to the economical 
administration of the army, but to a great 
increase in its efficiency. It demands also 



114 Leonard Wood 

the organization of a reserve and thorough 
instruction of the organized miHtia, and 
utilization of the army for the instruction 
of as many men as possible, in order that 
we may have instructed men enough to fill 
up our regular army and militia to war 
strength, and furnish a reserve to supply 
the losses incident to the first months of 
the war. " 

The strength of the Regular Army since 
the Spanish-American War had been fixed at 
one hundred thousand men, of which number 
only about twenty-five thousand could be 
regarded as a mobile force owing to the assign- 
ments to fixed garrisons, to coast fortifica- 
tions, etc. General Wood boldly proposed the 
abandonment of all needless army posts, with 
a net saving of some six million dollars a year, 
and the establishment of new stations favor- 
able for tactical training of all arms of the 
service in combination, as well as for relatively 
rapid concentration upon our frontiers in the 
event of invasion of our territory. This 
arrangement, which received the approval of 



Organizing the Army 115 

Mr. Henry L. Stimson, the Secretary of War, 
and the General Staff, contemplated a con- 
centration of the army in either two or three 
strategic groups upon the Pacific Coast, three 
on the Atlantic and Gulf Coast, and at least 
two centrally located between the Great Lakes 
and the Rio Grande. Such an arrangement 
would favor manoeuvres in which the National 
Guard would be able to operate and get in- 
struction from regular troops, and the plan 
would further be the one best adapted for 
expansion in the event of war. 

Since Wood's plan above outlined would 
mean the abandonment of stations dear to 
local communities, it aroused bitter opposition, 
notwithstanding the fact that the economy in 
administration of the regular establishment 
of the army would have meant, had it been 
devoted to military purposes, the addition to 
our forces either of ten regiments of infantry 
or of one hundred thousand reservists, upon 
the basis then existing. 

Representative Hay, who was in charge of 
the House Committee on Military Affairs 
and whose name was later connected with the 



ii6 Leonard Wood 

notorious Hay Army Appropriation Bill, led 
the opposition to the staff plan and succeeded 
also in inserting in the Army Bill a "joker" 
which provided that any officer who had not 
served ten years as an officer of the line should 
be barred from the position of Chief of Staff. 
Senator Elihu Root remarked of this provision 
"that it could not better accomplish its pur- 
pose if it read that after the fifth of March no 
man whose initials are L. W. shall be Chief of 
Staff. " The joker could affect only one other 
General and it would, had it become a law in 
the days of the old army, have disqualified all 
but four of the nineteen generals who have 
successively occupied the position of the head 
of the army. Among those who would have 
been debarred are Winfield Scott, Sheridan, 
McPherson, Meade, and Hancock, while Grant 
and Sherman would barely have escaped in- 
eligibility. Like most "jokers" in legislation, 
discovery was in this case a fatal bar to en- 
action into law and Mr. Hay's plans were 
frustrated. 

The proposal to concentrate for strategic 
purposes was only a part of the comprehensive 



Organizing the Army 117 

plan of General Wood for the reorganization 
of the American military forces. He was able 
to show that for an army which really offered 
no adequate protection, the United States 
was actually expending every year four-fifths 
as much money as was France for her large 
and efficient military machine, and he boldly 
launched his plans for a partial realization of 
the principle of universal military training. 
He said : 

"The needs of the United States to insure 
its defence against invasion by the four or 
five great military powers have been care- 
fully worked out. The smallest possible 
provision is for an army of 450,000 men. 
The possibility of war upon this continent 
(this was written in 191 2) is not immediate, 
it is true; but it is far greater than it was 
thirty-five years ago, and every year it 
becomes a more practical question. . . . 

''The United States needs at least 450,000 
men at home and in its foreign garrisons. 
It has something over 75,000 regulars and 
about 120,000 militia. Even if these men 



ii8 Leonard Wood 

were highly trained for war — which they 
are not — the country would have less than 
half the forces that it needs for self-defence." 

General Wood fully realized that at this time 
the country was not yet educated to the point 
of accepting the doctrine of universal military 
service. The 450,000 men referred to was 
only the number to be immediately ready. 
It was the first step, and behind it would come 
the millions of volunteers or drafted men. 

In vain the Chief of Staff attacked the 
antiquated system of incompetence which 
has been and largely is, even to-day, the great 
weakness of the American army — the system 
which retains superannuated bureau chiefs 
who have life positions, and who, being in full 
charge of expenditures are in actual control of 
the army. The system has resulted in red 
tape, interminable delays, and useless records 
which are generally dispensed with in all 
modem armies, as was promptly to be learned 
when our officers came in contact with the 
French General Staff. The system was, how- 
ever, too firmly rooted to be dislodged, and its 



Organizing the Army 119 

retention was a main cause of the breakdown 
of the army during the late World War. 

The characteristic attitude of a typical 
bureau chief in the army was first brought 
home to Wood when, in outfitting his regiment 
of Rough Riders, he succeeded in cutting the 
red tape, though to the immense disgust of 
the chief, who in vexation burst out, "Here I 
had a magnificent system; my office and 
department were in good working order and 
this damned war comes along and breaks it all 
up." Some Americans remember how Gen- 
eral Wood, coming home from the French 
front as Germany's terrible drive of the spring 
of 191 8 was being launched, and finding in- 
ertia, confusion, and incompetence everywhere 
present in the War Department, declared with 
undiplomatic but pardonable vexation of this 
desperate situation that it should be met by 
"sand-bagging" the said bureau chiefs. 

In the spring of 191 1 , the attempt was made 
to assemble an entire division of troops, the 
smallest body that can be considered an army. 
After three months of intensive work only two 
thirds of a division at war strength had been 



120 Leonard Wood 

brought together out of the peace-time skele- 
ton units. Of this attempt General Wood 
says: 

"The concentration at San Antonio de- 
monstrated conclusively our helplessness to 
meet with trained troops any sudden emer- 
gency, unless an adequate reserve, from 
which our skeleton organizations can be 
filled up, is provided in time of peace. 
People forget that the mere assembly of 
arms and men is not an army. An army is 
a well-balanced entity with definitely pre- 
scribed parts. . . . The troops of the di- 
vision which we assembled had never had 
any instruction as parts of a division. None 
of the officers had ever commanded a divi- 
sion; few had ever seen one, and this applied 
not only to the younger officers but to those 
of long service. 

"The Texas manoeuvres were a great 
object lesson, not of efficient organization, 
but of lack of efficient organization. Every- 
body saw this who was even moderately 
familiar with miHtary matters. " 



Organizing the Army 121 

Our history has revealed only too clearly the 
folly of disregarding the counsel of Washington 
and depending upon a system of volunteer 
levies of troops made after, instead of before, 
war comes. The experience of the Civil War 
showed that the most serious of all our troubles 
was that competent officers could not be ob- 
tained to train the levies even when raised, 
and this led Congress to pass the Morrill Act 
of 1862 with supplementary legislation in 1883, 
1890, and 1907. In accord with these acts, 
about one hundred higher educational institu- 
tions have each, under the direction of an 
army officer detailed for the purpose, given 
compulsory military instruction to their stu- 
dents. These institutions include private 
military academies, colleges of agriculture, 
and most state universities. The non-military 
institutions, generally known as land-grant 
institutions, comprise nearly one half the 
total, and in the year 1914 they gave military 
instruction to 23,864 men of suitable type for 
army officers. The amount of instruction 
given was, however, generally inadequate- 
three hours per week in term-time throughout 



122 Leonard Wood 

two years — but the material instructed was 
excellent, and the possibility for improvement 
with new legislation was most promising. 
General Wood devoted himself to the special 
development of this source of supply of army 
officers, and as the special menace of our in- 
volvement in the war arrived, he endeavored to 
extend a modification of the system to other 
institutions and especially to the large en- 
dowed universities of the East. In this effort 
he met with considerable success, notably at 
Princeton, Yale, and Harvard universities. 

The system itself as applied to the land- 
grant colleges underwent decided improvement 
imder his inspiration and guidance, but it was 
seriously hampered by the inadequate supply 
of officers furnished to the army from the 
Military Academy and by the terms of the 
Morrill Act which permitted of the detail of 
but one officer to any one institution, even 
though it might have a student body equiva- 
lent in size to that of one or more regiments. 
Notwithstanding these defects, some of the 
larger institutions, notably Illinois, Ohio State, 
and Cornell universities, contributed con- 



Organizing the Army 123 

siderable sums of money from their own funds 
for the pay of student officers, and they were 
thus enabled to turn out some tens of superior 
graduates each year, who upon the basis of 
careful inspection were found able to qualify 
as second lieutenants of volunteers. 

The McKellar Bill, framed to meet the de- 
fects of the Morrill Act by increasing the 
nimiber of army instructors at an institution, 
from one to from three to six in the case of the 
forty-nine larger institutions, as well as in 
other ways to increase the efficiency under 
this system of training, was not approved by 
the Secretary of War and hence it did not 
become a law. 

A valuable ally in his endeavor to provide 
company reserve officers for the United States 
Army, General Wood found in Dean Edward 
Orton of Ohio State University, an aid who 
worked unselfishly to improve the character 
of the college military training; and, through 
the Association of American Agricultural 
Colleges and Experiment Stations, he secured 
strong endorsement for a much improved 
system that, under the names of the Reserve 



124 Leonard Wood 

Officers' Training Corps and Reserve Officers* 
Corps, was in 1916 incorporated as one of the 
really good features of the Hay Army Appro- 
priation Bill. This R. O. T. C. system laid 
additional stress upon the military part of the 
training given, and supplied a strong incen- 
tive for entering the corps through providing 
graduates with the opportunity of service 
with the Regular Army as Provisional Second 
Lieutenants drawing full pay and allowances, 
and with the option, after a year of service, of 
going into the reserves, subject however to 
call in time of war. 

But General Wood was not content with 
this promise of increasing the supply of army 
officers. As Chief of Staff, he devised the 
Plattsburg Camp system which contributed so 
enormously to our effort in the war. He issued 
as Chief of Staff Facts of Interest Concerning 
the Military Resources and Policy of the United 
States, which was published in January, 19 14, 
and in which it was stated : 

"The time required for the training of 
extemporized armies depends largely on the 



Organizing the Army 125 

presence or absence of trained instructors. 
If there be a corps of trained officers and 
non-commissioned officers and a tested or- 
ganization of higher units with trained 
leaders and staff officers, the problem of 
training is limited to the training of the 
private soldier. This can be accomplished 
in a relatively short time, and under such 
conditions if arms and equipment are avail- 
able a respectable army can be formed 
within six months. But where the leaders 
themselves arc untrained and where officers 
and men must alike stumble toward effi- 
ciency without intelligent guidance, the 
formation of an efficient army is a question 
of years." 

In his attempt to provide the trained staff 
of instructors. General Wood encountered 
apathy, and the early results were discourag- 
ing. In the first year, 1913, only 222, mostly 
youths, were instructed in the Plattsburg 
Camps. In the following year, the invitation 
was extended to business men of college or 
high school training, and though the men were 



126 Leonard Wood 

compelled to bear their own expenses, the 
number that passed through the camps was 
667. The idea had now, however, obtained a 
firm hold and each graduate was a missionary 
who not only took up the call for national 
defence but who brought many others to the 
camps in the following years. In 19 15 and 
1916, the numbers which passed through the 
Plattsburg Camps were respectively 3406 and 
16,139. The next year we entered the war, 
the idea was immediately adopted for the 
Officers' Training Camps, and of 150,000 
who applied, 40,000 had within forty days 
been found eligible upon the basis of examina- 
tion and were later passed through the first 
camp. Better than any statements in words 
these figures tell the story of what this great 
movement meant to the American Army en- 
tering upon its responsibilities in the war. 

All this time at every opportunity, General 
Wood, by speaking and writing, was striving 
to awaken the country to the imminent need 
of preparing our defence without any delay 
whatever. To a lady in Boston who inquired 
of him what war it was that he would prepare 



Organizing the Army 127 

for, the General replied that if the captain of 
one of the ocean liners lying at the dock would 
tell her what particular storm it was that he 
was carrying the life-boats for, he also would 
tell her what war he desired to prepare to 
meet. 

Speaking in 191 2 he said: 

"We are not fools ; we have wars going on 
all about us ; we know that wars have always 
occurred ; we know that as long as men are 
men wars will always occur. Every rational 
man is interested in securing arbitration of 
such questions as can be properly arbitrated, 
but there are many questions which cannot 
be arbitrated. ..." 

"All this talk about our tremendous 
military resources is, under the conditions 
of modern war, rubbish. Undeveloped 
resources, in the crash of a sudden war — 
and modern wars are sudden — are just 
about as valuable an asset as would be an 
undeveloped gold mine in Alaska in a crisis 
on Wall Street. If the other nation would 
give us a gentlemanly notice of from six to 



128 Leonard Wood 

eighteen months that he proposes to fight, 
we should have some time to develop our 
undeveloped resources; but this is just what 
would not happen. " 



CHAPTER V 

THE FIGHT AGAINST PACIFISM 

Date of increased growth of the pacifist cult— Fate pointed to 
Leonard Wood as the prophet and Organizer of national 
defence— The unholy alliance of professors, preachers, and 
socialists— Organs and agents of pacifism— The defence socie- 
ties—Administrative hostility to preparedness and to oppos- 
ing opinions— The American League to limit armament- 
Apathy of the Administration concerning the war— Mr. 
Wilson's peace move in September, 1914— The President de- 
clares to Congress that the country is already prepared- 
Orders to stifle expression of opinion by army officers- 
Wood is not silenced— His speech to the Mayflower Society 
—Endorses the American Legion and is rapped by Wash- 
ington—The Plattsburg idea— The military obligation of 
citizenship. 

On the fourth of March, 1913, Woodrow 
Wilson began his administration as President 
of the United States. It is a date from which 
to reckon the sudden and sinister growth of 
the cult of pacifism which has become a 
menace for the country. 

Fate had ordained that Leonard Wood, who 
had been bent on preparing the nation for 
9 129 



130 Leonard Wood 

the coming crisis, should become the dominant 
spirit of the Preparedness Movement. It was 
very largely his knowledge and experience 
and his military judgment, which supplied the 
basis for the propaganda directed by the sev- 
eral defence societies later to be organized. 
His solemn warnings, so insistently sounded, 
were again and again to be flouted by the 
Administration . Yet every one of these warn- 
ings was destined to be confirmed by the march 
of events, as one painful lesson after another 
was to be borne in upon the much harassed 
American nation. 

Drawn closely together through their as- 
sociation of Spanish- American war days, the 
bonds between Roosevelt and Wood waxed 
yet stronger in the fight against pacifism, — the 
greatest crisis in our history and one which 
more than once all but resulted in the downfall 
of civilization. That this did not occtir at the 
time of Germany's March drive of 191 8, was 
no fault of the American Government, which 
though already officially at war for a period of 
eleven months, had at the time placed in the 
field but four divisions of troops. 



The Fight against Pacifism 131 

The strength of the pacifist movement has 
lain very largely in an unholy and very largely 
unrecognized alliance of the more academic 
college professor with the literal preacher and 
the radical socialist. One has only to glance 
at the personnel of the boards of directors of 
the pacifist societies to find ample confirma- 
tion of the above statement. 

It has been the policy of Germany not alone 
to strengthen the home country through per- 
fecting an irresistible military machine, but at 
the same time to weaken and undermine the 
defence elements in rival countries through 
encouragement of every latent pacifist influ- 
ence. No doubt to a large extent uncon- 
sciously, the American pacifists as a class have 
been cleverly exploited by the German agents, 
and most intensively within the period im- 
mediately preceding and during the World 
War. A well-known pacifist, in a review of the 
peace movement in America which he pub- 
lished in 19 10, has naively told us how the 
late Professor Ernst Richard of Columbia 
University, the then president both of the 
New York and of the German-American Peace 



132 Leonard Wood 

Societies, led the German-American societies 
of the whole nation to commit themselves to 
the arbitration movement. In the same ar- 
ticle, he gloats over the fact that Congressmen 
Richard Bartholdt of Missouri was the lead- 
ing peace man in Congress and had "led the 
fight each year against the inordinate military- 
ambition of the big navy group with remark- 
able success." 

When the war had broken out in Europe, 
these two pacifist leaders soon became re- 
vealed as the enemies of America. Bartholdt, 
until his retirement from Congress, promoted 
every German move in that body, was on 
terms of intimacy with the Imperial German 
Ambassador, and founded the notorious 
"American Independence Union" which was 
shown by the Providence Jour7ial to have been 
financed from Germany for the express pur- 
pose of furthering German political interests 
in the United States. 

When education breaks down, propaganda 
must take its place in any emergency, and 
there is a distinction to be recognized between 
what might be called legitimate propaganda — 




General Wood at Plattsburg 



The Fight against Pacifism 133 

an intensive presentation of vital facts and 
reasoned conclusions — and the spurious ap- 
peal to the emotions and the prejudices which 
is usually presented in an alluring form of 
fanciful phrasing, and which has not inaptly 
been termed "impropaganda." 

Long before the crisis came upon us with the 
outbreak of the war in Europe, the peace 
advocates had pre-empted the field, largely 
without opposition, and were in consequence 
entrenched behind the stout wall of a general 
commitment of the public mind uninstructed 
as to any counter arguments. The American 
Peace Society was founded in 1828 and has 
long maintained a magazine, The Advocate oj 
Peace, as well as a corps of ' ' peace lecturers ' ' ; 
and having lately been largely supported by 
the Carnegie millions, its disbursements an- 
nually have been in the neighborhood of $100,- 
000. The World Peace Foundation has had 
an annual income of nearly the same figure, 
derived from the estate of the late Edwin 
Ginn, the Boston publisher. Among its paid 
"peace lecturers" have been the British writer, 
Norman Angell — to whom more than to any 



134 Leonard Wood 

one not in official life the almost fatal unpre- 
paredness of Great Britain is to be ascribed — 
and Dr. David Starr Jordan, who shares with 
William Jennings Bryan a like culpability as 
respects the United States. Dr. Jordan, lately 
the head of the National Educational Associa- 
tion, has infected that body with pacifism and 
is reported to have once made seventy peace 
addresses in two months and at another time 
to have delivered sixty peace lectures on the 
Pacific Coast and in the Middle West. The 
World Peace Foundation is reported also to 
have distributed twenty -five thousand sets of 
a series of leaflets directed against preparing 
the nation for defence. Andrew Carnegie's 
Rectorial Address at St. Andrew's University 
in Scotland, in which the iron magnate ap- 
pealed to students not to volunteer for war 
service but to be conscientious objectors, was 
distributed in hundreds of thousands of copies 
and translated into several languages. The 
Lake Mohonk Peace Conferences were started 
in 1884 and the annual gatherings had been 
given much prominence by the American Press. 
As against this record of activity of the peace 



The Fight against Pacifism 135 

societies during the pre-war period, that of 
the preparedness advocates has been meagre 
enough. Until the war broke out in Europe 
there had been but one well-known American 
organization for the promotion of the national 
defence, — the Navy League — an organization 
which was founded during President Roose- 
velt's administration and with his active co- 
operation. Before the war it published a 
modest journal, The Navy League Journal, and 
it had maintained a more or less precarious 
existence. 

With the outbreak of the war the red- 
blooded element of the population and the 
men of vision of the nation came together to 
support the organization and give it greater 
power and influence. In December, 1914, 
some two hundred and fifty prominent Amer- 
icans came together in New York City under 
the leadership of Mr. S. Stanwood Menken, 
Major George Haven Putnam, Henry L. 
Stimson and others, and organized the Na- 
tional Security League as a non-political 
association to promote an adequate national 
defence. 



136 Leonard Wood 

Shortly after the organization of the Na- 
tional Security League there was formed in 
the office of G. P. Putnam's Sons, publishers, 
the American Rights League, with Major 
George Haven Putnam as president and mov- 
ing spirit. In spite of its limited financial 
support, this organization played a part in 
arousing the nation to the responsibilities 
which it will be difficult to overestimate. It 
was thoroughout the indomitable will and the 
spendid patriotism of this veteran of the 
American Civil War which triumphed over 
one rebuff after another from a hostile admin- 
istration. 

No sooner had the National Security League 
organized, than a group of pacifists came to- 
gether in New York City at the call of Bishop 
Greer, President Nicholas Murray Butler, 
Mr. Oswald Garrison Villard, and others, and 
founded the American League to Limit Arma- 
ments and to "voice a protest against agita- 
tion for increased armament in this country." 

The violent opposition which the Adminis- 
tration evinced toward any expression of 
opinion that differed in any way from his own, 



The Fight against Pacifism 137 

was the direct cause of a division within the 
National Security League between those who 
believed that the Administration should not, 
or could not, be wisely opposed, even when his 
policy would leave the country open to inva- 
sion, and those who favored more independent 
action. This conflict of opinion resulted in 
the more outspoken elements of the League 
seceding from the original organization and in 
July, 191 5, founding the American Defence 
Society with Theodore Roosevelt as Honorary 
President and Dr. David Jayne Hill and Presi- 
dent John Grier Hibben of Princeton Unr- 
versity on the directing board. 

War was declared in Europe during the first 
week of August, 19 14, and the atrocities and 
the rape of Belgium occurred August 5th-8th 
and August iith-i4th. On August 19th, the 
President issued a proclamation in which he 
said, "We must be impartial in thought as 
well as in action, must put a curb upon our 
sentiments as well as upon every transaction 
that might be construed as a preference of one 
party to the struggle before another." The 
first reverse to the German army at the battle 



138 Leonard Wood 

of the Marne was already beginning to be ap- 
parent on September 7th, on which date the 
Kaiser sent to Mr. Wilson that remarkable re- 
quest for "an impartial opinion" concerning 
the war. The President replied, "I am hon- 
ored that you should have turned to me as the 
representative of a people truly disinterested 
as regards the present war. ... I speak 
thus frankly because I know you will expect 
and wish me to do so as one friend speaks to 
another," and entered no protest whatever 
against the barbarous acts of Germany. 

Acting upon stimulation from Count von 
Bemstorff on this first German setback, Mr. 
Wilson proclaimed on September 9th a day of 
prayer for peace, and he began negotiations 
through Berlin with a view to bringing it about. 
His effort was effectually blocked by the Allies 
in their agreement not to make peace without 
common consent. 

Though under the Constitution the Presi- 
dent is Commander-in-Chief of the military 
and naval forces of the Republic, and though 
with the outbreak of war in Europe every 
other neutral nation of any consequence began 



The Fight against Pacifism 139 

to give thought to the national defence; Mr. 
Wilson evinced not the slightest interest in 
our country's unprotected condition, and it is 
known that he made no endeavors to secure 
correct information upon national defence 
from any responsible officer of either the army 
or navy other than the civilian secretaries. 
Whether the warnings which were volunteered 
in most decisive terms penetrated into his 
seclusion cannot be positively asserted, but it 
is known that Admiral Bradley A. Fiske, the 
Naval Aide for Operations (the highest ranking 
officer of the navy and the nearest equivalent 
in our navy to a Chief of Staff) , sent an official 
letter to the Secretary of the Navy which was 
dated November 9, 19 14, and which reported 
the navy * ' unprepared for war. ' ' This official 
letter of warning from our foremost naval 
strategist was pigeon-holed by the Secretary, 
who afterward publicly denied that he had 
ever received it. Admiral Fiske's diary, which 
has since been published, shows, however, 
that there were several sharp exchanges be- 
tween him and the Secretary upon the subject 
and the letter was later imearthed in response 



140 Leonard Wood 

to a resolution of the United States Senate and 
widely published throughout the country on 
April 22i, 1915- The American Defence So- 
ciety on May 12, 19 16, drew the President's 
attention to this letter and on May 226. re- 
ceived his acknowledgment of the com- 
munication. 

On December 17, 19 14, Admiral Fiske 
testified before the House Committee on 
Naval Affairs that not only was the navy not 
ready for war, but that it could not be made 
ready in five years, and these statements were 
at once published throughout the country. 
Notwithstanding these facts, the Secretary of 
the Navy in his report dated December, 19 14, 
wrote: "This has been a proud and solemn 
year for the American navy. . . . Allow 
me, Mr. President, to congratulate you as its 
Commander-in-Chief upon the record it has 
made, upon its preparedness for duty, upon the 
reliance you can place upon it in any time of 
national need." 

Disregarding the solemn warnings of Gen- 
eral Wood and Admiral Fiske that we were 
utterly unprepared in a military sense, Mr. 



The Fight against Pacifism 141 

Wilson, speaking on December 8, 19 14, de- 
clared to the joint houses of Congress: 

"We shall not alter our attitude because 
some amongst us are nervous and excited. 
. . . The question has not changed its 
aspects because the times are not normal. 
. . . Let there be no misconception. 
The country has been misinformed. We 
have not been negligent of national defence." 

Yet considerably more than a year later 
General Wood felt compelled to say: 

"We know this, that if a war does hit us, 
we have not in any particular — I make no 
exception whatever — adequate reserve ma- 
terials for the first force we should have to 
call." 

From the outbreak of the war, the Adminis- 
tration took strong means to stifle expressions 
concerning defence necessities. Like Lord 
Roberts in England, General Wood and Ad- 
miral Fiske in this country, in this supreme 
crisis, elected to warn the country at whatever 



142 Leonard Wood 

cost to their own careers. On February 23, 
191 5, General Order No. 10 was issued to 
the army enjoining officers to "refrain, until 
further orders, from giving out for publication 
any interview, statement, discussion, or article 
on the military 'situation in the United States 
or abroad, as any expression of their views on 
the subject at present is prejudicial to the best 
interests of the service." 

Had this order been strictly obeyed by Gen- 
eral Wood, it is not unlikely that the war 
might have had a different ending, for it was 
his voice of authority, reinforced by the splen- 
did support and the wonderful prestige of the 
strenuous ex-President, and echoed and sent 
abroad by George Haven Putnam, Henry A. 
Wise Wood, James M. Beck, and others, and 
by the defence societies generally, which 
quickened the patriotic national conscience 
and aroused the fighting spirit of the nation. 
Speaking before the Mayflower Society, Gen- 
eral Wood said: 

"The deeds of our ancestors are things to 
be proud of. But our duty to our descend- 



The Fight against Pacifism 143 

ants is something to be thinking of now. 
The country has never been in a more criti- 
cal condition than it is to-day, and what the 
future brings to us must depend very much 
upon the wisdom of our people. . . . We 
owe it to ourselves and to those who come 
after us to take heed, not to the idle prating 
of dreamers, but to the stern facts which 
surround us and which lie ahead of us. 
What we want must not influence us too 
much; we must take into consideration 
conditions which we must meet. We may 
desire world peace, we may beHeve in arbi- 
tration, and we may pray devoutly that war 
will never come to us, but we should not 
forget the teachings of history or neglect the 
observation and deductions of common 
sense. . . . 

"In the old times, when weapons were 
simple, and almost every man had to use a 
weapon of some sort to get a part of his 
food, training in the use of arms was easily 
acquired. In these days, when arms are 
intricate, and it takes a long time to learn 
how to use them; when steam navigation 



144 Leonard Wood 

and rapid transit have divided the distance 
that separates us from our possible enemies 
by ten, it is all the more necessary that 
preparation should be made in advance. It 
is all nonsense to say that untrained men 
can meet with success just as good men 
well-trained and well-disciplined." 

In March of 191 5, with the approval of 
General Wood, the American Legion was or- 
ganized with a view to secure a first reserve of 
250,000 to 300,000 men, all of whom would 
agree to respond at once to any call for service. 
Washington indicated its displeasure, and, 
without first consulting the General to de- 
termine whether the absurd charges made 
through the press by the pacifist Bishop Greer 
were true, demanded an investigation to see 
whether this was not in violation of General 
Order No. 10 enjoining officers of the army 
from comment on the military situation. The 
correspondence which followed entirely vin- 
dicated the General by showing conclusively 
that the charges made in the press were with- 
out foundation ; but the intent of the rap from 



The Fight against Pacifism 145 

headquarters to force him into silence was not 
lost either upon the General or upon the 
public. 

A desire on the part of the public to know 
the truth began now to be more apparent, and 
General Wood's addresses on the subject of 
preparedness were in demand. Located at 
Governor's Island in New York Harbor, he 
was able to speak to public audiences in the 
Metropolis or at near-lying communities, and 
did so sometimes two or three times a week. 
While scrupulously careful to make no criti- 
cism of his superiors, he nevertheless lost no 
opportunity to drive home those fundamental 
lessons which the crisis demanded. His time 
was, however, in the main given over to the 
building up of the military forces under his 
jurisdiction, and these included the National 
Guard which it was his duty to inspect. 

The Plattsburg Camps for the training of 
officers which he had planned and organized 
in 19 1 3 and originally intended for youths only, 
were now extended to those business men of 
the country who had had college or high school 
instruction and whose careers in the business 



10 



146 Leonard Wood 

world showed that they were especially fitted 
to become officers in the army. Under the 
inspiration of the General, the business men 
responded to the call with enthusiasm, and 
having passed through the camps they went 
out as so many missionaries to spread the gos- 
pel of preparedness. Such men as Robert 
Bacon, a former Secretary of State of the 
United States, and John Purroy Mitchel, the 
Mayor of New York City, elected to become 
"rookies," and the splendid effect of their 
influence it would be difficult to overestimate. 
In the campaign which the General made to 
secure recruits for the camps, as well as in 
lectures delivered to the men, the opportunity 
was found to sound the call to arms and to 
dispel the erroneous impressions concerning 
what the military history of the country has 
been. In setting forth the purpose of these 
camps the General said in an address: 

"The Plattsburg Idea is expressed by the 
words — 'Preparation for National Service/ 
Primarily, service in war, because training 
for such service is generally wanting in this 




Mayor Mitchel and General Wood reviewing parade of the Alaska 
soldiers at New York City Hall 



The Fight against Pacifism 147 

country. Incidentally, the training is train- 
ing for life, for with the spirit of service for 
the nation in time of war goes the spirit of 
service for the nation and the community 
in time of peace. The Plattsburg spirit 
voices the principle of individual obligation 
for national service and an appreciation of 
the fact that with equality of opportunity 
and service goes equally the obligation to 
the limit of our physical and mental capacity. 
"It is the spirit of patriotism; it voices 
Universal Military Service. At first it was 
a voice crying in the wilderness. Now it is 
becoming a voice which is heard in the high- 
ways and byways of the nation. It is not 
only a call to service, an appeal to every 
man's sense of duty, but it is also a voice of 
warning — an attempt to awaken a slumber- 
ing people to a sense of present unprepared- 
ness and inability to meet its soldier 
responsibility by citizens of a democracy, — 
of a democracy whose main army in time of 
real stress and trouble, in case of war with 
a strong nation must be the people, trained 
to reasonable efficiency in the use of arms in 



148 Leonard Wood 

order that they may be able to effec- 
tively defend their country in time of 
need. ... 

"It appeals to the good sense of our 
women to remember that while we are 
striving for world peace, and all in agree- 
ment that war is horrible and regrettable, 
that nevertheless it is often necessary and 
unavoidable in the discharge of our duties 
and in the defence of the right. It appeals 
to them not to permit conditions to continue 
which will certainly result in their men being 
sent into the struggle against their better 
prepared antagonists willing, but almost 
useless, sacrifices. . . . 

"It (the Plattsburg spirit) strives to im- 
press upon the people that the sinews of war 
are not number and wealth alone. On the 
contrary, that the real sinews of war are the 
bodies and spirits of men, trained and dis- 
ciplined, and backed by the spirit of sacrifice 
and an appreciation of citizenship obligation 
in war as well as in peace. . . . 

"If the Plattsburg spirit becomes the 
spirit of the nation, the result will be na- 



The Fight against Pacifism 149 

tional solidarity to an extent never before 
dreamt of in this land of ours. . . . 

"A general acceptance of the Plattsburg 
idea means the building up of a spirit of 
real Americanism, a spirit which will be 
strong, to make America what she must be 
if she is going to endure — a real melting pot 
— in which the various, and often discordant 
elements which are now swarming to our 
shores will be fused into one common mass 
of Americanism. It means the creation 
of a nation, animated and actuated by a 
strong national spirit. . . . We shall have 
a national spirit actuated by high ptirpose 
and firm resolve, replacing sentimentality 
marked by unwholesome characteristics — 
characteristics which foreshadow the de- 
cadence of a people." 

In 191 5, General Wood lectured before the 
students of Princeton University on **The 
Military Obligation of Citizenship," and his 
lectures were issued in book form by the Uni- 
versity with an introduction by President Hib- 
ben. In these lectures, as in all others which he 



150 Leonard Wood 

delivered, the preparation which the General 
enjoined was not for but against war; and he 
spoke before students not only at Princeton 
but at Harvard University, at Williams Col- 
lege, at the University of Michigan, and else- 
where. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE DARKENING OF COUNSEL 

Colonel House urges lifting the British blockade — German agents 
preach "Freedom of the Seas" — "Weasel" words, notes, 
and ultimatums — House under pressure urges the President 
to secure expert reports on national defence — These reports 
kept secret against public protest — Wood blamed for Roose- 
velt's address at Plattsburg — Mr. Wilson supports view that 
the war was not made in Germany — The country deceived 
by the President on nature of expert reports — Henry A. 
Wise Wood forces out the secret report — Mr. Wilson pares 
down the defence programme — Naval officers punished for re- 
vealing the truth — Secretary Daniels deceives Congressional 
committee regarding naval deficiences. 

Already in the spring of 191 5 the British 
blockade of Germany, though not rigidly 
and effectively enforced for fear of alienating 
American sentiment, was nevertheless press- 
ing upon the enemy's vitals and causing great 
distress and greater apprehension. American 
and other neutral shippers were making un- 
heard of profits by even this restricted trade 
with Germany, and the German cry for "Free- 
dom of the Seas" was resounding from every 

151 



152 Leonard Wood 

American rostrum where German propa- 
gandists could get a hearing. The Kaiser's 
agents, Count von Bernstorff, Dr. Demburg, 
and Dr. Kuehnemann were expounding this 
doctrine both in and out of season. 

In a Httle tract by Dr. Kuehnemann which 
was printed in the German language and 
widely circulated among German-Americans, 
it was declared that the Germans "fight the 
good fight for the freedom of the seas, for the 
freedom of nations; their victory is the one 
hope of civilization itself." President Wilson 
dispatched to the British Government numer- 
ous protests, each more vigorous than the 
last, against the restrictions which were being 
placed upon the American trade, and his con- 
fidential adviser. Colonel House, was sent 
abroad as a " superambassador ' ' (not confirmed 
by the United States Senate), and he made 
arrangements with the German Foreign Office 
for the setting up of freedom of the seas 
through lifting the British blockade. German 
consent to this project was, of course, assured 
in advance and was at once accorded, but 
Colonel House naturally met with no success 



The Darkening of Counsel 153 

in his efforts to induce the British Govern- 
ment to adopt a poHcy which must inevitably 
spell defeat for the Allies, and the full success 
of Germany's plan for conquest. 

When, during the illness of Colonel House 
at Paris, the false news was spread in the press 
that he had died. Count von Bernstorff gave 
to the Berlin Tagehlatt an interview in which 
he said: 

"No more honest pacifist ever lived. He 
told me personally that he had just as 
energetically protested in London against 
the British blockade as the U-boat war, and 
couldn't believe that either would lead to a 
decision. ... I deeply deplore that I did 
not see this dear friend once more and that 
he did not live to see the perfection of his 
grand ideals." 

On the 7th of May, 191 5, after deliberate 
preparations, Germany perpetrated the out- 
rage of sinking the Lusitania, an act of Hun- 
nish barbarism which profoundly moved the 
American people, more than a hundred of 



154 Leonard Wood 

whom had been sacrificed; but officially it 
brought only the reaction of the "too proud 
to fight " address, and that long series of diplo- 
matic notes which extended over a year and 
ten months. 

Unsuccessful in his attempt to lift the Brit- 
ish blockade, Colonel House returned to Wash- 
ington, and some months later Mr. Wilson 
appeared before the joint houses of Congress 
to advocate the twin policies of "peace with- 
out victory" and "freedom of the seas." 

A month after the Lusitania outrage, the 
Conference Committee on National Prepared- 
ness was organized among the defence societies, 
with Henry A. Wise Wood as chairman. 
The wisdom of this union of effort was at once 
to be proven, though the facts which we are 
here to present have not before been given to 
the public. The chairman of the Conference 
Committee was a friend of John Hays Ham- 
mond, and both he and Mr. Hammond were, 
during the summer, the neighbors of Colonel 
House at his home near Cape Ann, Massa- 
chusetts. Since House was the unique con- 
fidential friend of the President, Wood made a 



The Darkening of Counsel 155 

strong appeal to Hammond to see if he could 
not through House get the President to move 
in the now desperate matter of preparing our 
national defence. This Hammond did, but 
with no other result than a suggestion from 
House to get in touch with the Secretary of 
War, Mr. Garrison. This faiUng to bring 
results, the appeal was renewed by Mr. Wise 
Wood, though in a different way. In a per- 
sonal letter he writes: 

"I hunted up Hammond and told him 
something really had to be done, saying that 
the sentiment for preparedness was rising 
so rapidly throughout the country that the 
inactivity of the Administration would soon 
become a public scandal, and that the 
Democratic party would have only the 
President to thank if it should be utilized 
by its political opponents. I suggested 
that Hammond see House again and point 
out to him the political danger into which 
the President was running because of his 
refusal to take the steps necessary to pre- 
pare the army and navy for active service. 



156 Leonard Wood 

Hammond said that he would act at once, 
and did. He saw House and told the latter 
that unless proper defensive measures were 
immediately taken by the Administration, 
the President might expect the Republican 
party to make a political issue of Wilson's 
inactivity. Hammond told House that 
while the Republican party would not wish 
to make political capital out of such a 
matter, Mr. Wilson was so shaping affairs 
that the Republican party in order to fulfil 
its duty would be compelled to attack him 
for his dereliction. This, Hammond told 
me, greatly aroused Colonel House, who 
said that he would write at once to the 
President, at Cornish, and recommend that 
something be done. Immediately after Mr. 
Hammond's action, came Mr. Wilson's half- 
hearted request for recommendations by 
the General Board of the Navy and the 
General Staff of the Army." 

These requests for reports on what was 
necessary for the national defence were sent 
from Cornish on July 21st, and the reports of 



The Darkening of Counsel i57 

the two boards were submitted to the Presi- 
dent on July 30th. The reports of these 
expert boards, containing as they did such 
vitally important information for the safety 
of the country, were not made public. In the 
public mind was the question. Was the Presi- 
dent right when he assured the joint houses of 
Congress, and through them the nation, that 
they had been misinformed and that the 
national defence was already secure? or, Did 
a desperate condition exist such as General 
Wood, Admiral Fiske, Mr. Wise Wood, Con- 
gressman Gardner, and a number of former 
Secretaries of War had asserted? If these 
latter were right and the President wrong, it 
was obviously necessary to at once utilize 
every available agency to the end of support- 
ing representatives in Congress when that 
body should meet and take up the considera- 
tion of the necessary appropriation bills. In 
this period of suspense, the National Defence 
Society presented to the President a formal 
request that the recommendations of the 
expert boards be made public. In the dis- 
patches of November 16, 19 15, it was given 



158 Leonard Wood 

out, after a Cabinet meeting, that Mr. Wilson, 
against the advice of the then Secretary of 
War (Mr. Garrison) refused to make these 
recommendations public; his attitude being 
reported to be that as head of the Government 
he was responsible for the general policies 
urged and that his decisions should be given 
out in advance of the recommendations of the 
experts. 

About a fortnight later the first great Con- 
gress of the National Security League was held 
at Chicago, and three former Secretaries of 
War joined with the entire convention in 
imanimously passing a resolution which re- 
quested the President to at once make public 
the recommendations of the experts. The 
word recommendations, rather than reports, 
was used in the resolution so that it should be 
clear that nothing which the public was not 
entitled to know (such as secret military in- 
formation) was intended. The request was 
denied, the only reply vouchsafed being a note 
from the President's secretary acknowledging 
receipt of the resolution. 

In the summer of 19 15 ex-President Roose- 



The Darkening of Counsel 159 

velt was one of a number of public men who 
addressed the "rookies" at the Plattsburg 
Camp. Unfortunately, the report of his ad- 
dress, which had been prepared with special 
care and had been gone over with General 
Wood and Robert Bacon and received their 
approval, was, in the press accounts, combined 
with statements which Mr. Roosevelt had 
made when talking to press correspondents 
outside the military reservation as he was 
waiting for the train to take him back to New 
York. Some of the statements which ap- 
peared in this interview, but which were not 
made in the Plattsburg address, were that for 
thirteen months the United States had played 
an ignoble part among the nations and had 
tamely submitted to seeing the weak whom 
we had covenanted to protect, grievously 
wronged; that we had seen our men, women, 
and children murdered on the high seas with- 
out action on our part ; and had used elocution 
as a substitute for action. "ReHance upon 
high-sounding words unbacked by deeds," 
said Colonel Roosevelt, "is proof of a mind 
that dwells only in the realm of shadow and 



i6o Leonard Wood 

of sham." He denounced those who would 
substitute the platitudes of peace congresses 
for military preparedness. 

For permitting the supposed address to be 
made, Secretary Garrison administered a 
rebuke to General Wood, to which the Gen- 
eral promptly replied: "Your telegram re- 
ceived, and the policy laid down will be rigidly 
adhered to." 

Even before the Lusitania outrage, red- 
blooded Americans who were not pro-German 
in their sympathies had probably with few 
exceptions become convinced that the World 
War had been made in Germany as a war of 
conquest, and their sentiments had been well 
voiced by the late Congressman Gardner when 
he declared that the issue was one between 
autocracy and democracy, and that before we 
could have lasting peace one or the other must 
go down in ruins. The German propaganda, 
however, aided by a few renegade Britishers, 
had been going to great lengths in order to 
show that instead of being made in Germany 
the war was the work of diplomats, that one 
nation was as guilty as another, or if any one 





Charles E. Hughes and General Wood at Plattsburg 



The Darkening of Counsel i6i 

was more culpable than the others it was Great 
Britain. Unfortunately, on a number of oc- 
casions this German motif was exploited by 
President Wilson in his speeches. In Sep- 
tember, 1 9 14, after the Battle of the Mame 
and the rape of Belgium, he wrote to the 
Kaiser that he was "the representative of a 
people truly disinterested as respects the 
present war." In May, 1916, he said of the 
war in a public address, "with its causes and 
its objects we are not concerned. The obscure 
fountains from which its stupendous flood has 
burst forth we are not interested to search for 
or explore." Seven months later in another 
address he said: 

"Have you ever heard what started the 
present war? If you have, I wish you 
would publish it because nobody else has so 
far as I can gather. Nothing in particular 
started it but everything in general. There 
had been growing up in Europe a mutual 
suspicion, an interchange of conjectures 
about what this government and that gov- 
ernment was going to do, an interlacing of 



i62 Leonard Wood 

alliances and understandings, a complex 
web of intrigue and spying, that presently 
was siire to entangle the whole of the family 
of mankind on that side of the water in its 
meshes." 

Two months later, speaking for the United 
States in a note to the AlHed nations dated 
December 20, 191 6, the President "took the 
liberty" of calling attention to the fact that 
the "objects which the statesmen of bel- 
ligerents of both sides have in mind are 
virtually the same." 

During the summer and the autumn of 191 5 
there was ever increasing impatience over the 
inaction of the Administration with respect to 
the national defence, but this feeling was to 
some extent kept in check by vague sugges- 
tions which emanated from Washington that 
Mr. Wilson was earnestly considering the 
whole matter and would presently make pub- 
lic his programme. In the autumn the Sec- 
retary of the Navy announced the appointment 
of a "Naval Consulting Board" upon which 
men of the highest technical attainments had 



The Darkening of Counsel 163 

been placed on recommendations by the scien- 
tific and technical associations of the country. 
The opinion prevailed quite generally that this 
Board, composed as it was of such eminent 
experts, was to give counsel to the Administra- 
tion on matters of national defence, and the 
existence of such a Board no doubt quieted the 
country through dissemination of the belief 
that those fundamental questions of national 
defence and national policy in respect to the 
war were being considered by the Board. As 
a matter of fact it was announced at the initial 
meeting of the Board that it was not to con- 
cern itself with such questions as the size of 
the navy, etc. — that is, with preparedness 
questions — but that its recommendations were 
to be "technical merely." 

During President Roosevelt's administra- 
tion, the United States Navy had been rated 
second in strength among the navies of the 
world; under President Taft the navy fell to 
the third place ; and under President Wilson to 
the fourth rank. It was Mr. Henry A. Wise 
Wood who was the first to actively urge before 
the country the restoration of our navy to its 



1 64 Leonard Wood 

former position of relative strength. The 
matter was taken up in conference with Colo- 
nel Roosevelt, who entirely approved of Mr. 
Wise Wood's programme and gave him a strong 
letter of endorsement to be used upon a suit- 
able occasion. 

With the assembling of Congress in Novem- 
ber, 19 1 5, it was inevitable that the subject 
of national defence should come up and the 
recommendations of the experts, which had 
been kept secret despite the appeals of the 
defence societies, must now be made public. 
Early in November the President at the an- 
niversary celebration of the New York Man- 
hattan Club first announced his programme 
of defence. "No thoughtful man," he said, 
"feels any panic haste in this matter. The 
country is not threatened from any quarter." 
Of his programme of defence he said, "In it 
there is no pride of opinion. It represents the 
best professional and expert opinion of the 
country." 

The President's plan for enlargement of the 
naval establishment called for the expenditure 
of only a himdred million dollars a year; but 



The Darkening of Counsel 165 

this was put before the pubHc as a five-year 
programme and played up in the press in 
consequence as a demand for a half-billion 
dollars. This programme would have left 
our navy even at the end of the five-year 
period in its same position relative to Ger- 
many. The banquet in commemoration of 
the Manhattan Club at which the President 
presented his programme was attended by 
the heads of the various defence societies, 
who listened with hopes again dashed by 
this inadequate preparedness programme 
masked in high-sounding phrases. Said the 
President : 

"In doing this I have tried to purge my 
heart of all personal and selfish motives. 
For the time being I speak as the trustee 
and guardian of a nation's rights, charged 
with the duty of speaking for that nation 
in matters involving her sovereignty — a 
nation too big and generous to be exacting 
and yet courageous enough to defend its 
rights and the liberties of its people where- 
ever assailed or invaded." 



i66 Leonard Wood 

When the President's preparedness scheme 
was thus made public, the defence societies 
found themselves once more divided as to 
whether it was either wise or expedient to 
oppose him openly by bold attack upon these 
inadequate proposals. The chairman of the 
Conference Committee on National Prepared- 
ness, Mr. Wise Wood, left the banquet to 
speak on preparedness before the Chamber of 
Commerce in the city of Portland on the fol- 
lowing evening. Before leaving the banquet 
he told Mr. Garrison, the Secretary of War, 
that in this address he would make the reply 
of the Preparedness Movement to the Presi- 
dent's speech. Arriving in Portland, he found 
that the President, Secretary Garrison, and 
Secretary Daniels had all sent telegrams to the 
Chamber of Commerce expressing their in- 
terest in air defence (Mr. Wood was President 
of the Association of Aeronautical Engineers 
and an authority upon questions of air de- 
fence). In his Portland address, Mr. Wise 
Wood put forth publicly for the first time the 
programme for re-establishing the American 
Navy in the position of second naval power, 




)U. & u. 



General Wood and vSecretary Garrison at Dayton, Ohio, during 

the flood 



The Darkening of Counsel 167 

and he read the endorsement of his plan by 
ex-President Roosevelt in the letter written at 
Oyster Bay a few days before. In this letter 
Colonel Roosevelt said in part: 

"I wish to express my hearty concurrence 
in the position you have taken upon national 
preparedness." 

After repeating Mr. Wise Wood's statement 
concerning our country's military and naval 
obligations, the ex-President continued: 

"And in order to meet these irrevocable 
obligations, the nation should immediately: 

"Enter upon the construction of a navy 
which in size and efficiency shall be such 
as speedily to restore it to the position it 
formerly held, of second naval power in the 
world; and amplify its military strength so 
as to provide an adequate mobile army as 
an incident to providing the means for suc- 
cessfully and immediately resisting any ex- 
pedition that any one of the great military 
nations may be capable of putting on our 
shores. 



i68 Leonard Wood 

"Our people are under obligations to you 
for having so clearly placed before them 
their immediate duty. . . . The instant 
needs, however, are two. First, we should 
at once enter upon a comprehensive plan of 
naval construction which shall at the earliest 
possible moment make us the second naval 
power of the world. Second, we must in- 
sist upon the publication by the Govern- 
ment of the plans of the General Staff of the 
army, so that the people may know what 
their military experts regard as the vital 
military needs of the Republic." 

Of his programme of defence the President 
had said, "In it there is no pride of opinion. 
It represents the best professional and expert 
opinion of the country." Now it was true 
that the President's programme was based on 
reports of the army and navy experts, but 
in so far at least as the naval part of this pro- 
gramme was concerned, it was based not on 
the original report of the General Board of 
the navy as to what they considered necessary, 
but upon a substitute report as to how to 



The Darkening of Counsel 169 

spend the sum of ^100,000,000, which was all 
that the President was willing to recommend; 
and, moreover he had still further pared down 
this pared-down report. His statement to the 
people that his programme represented the 
*'best professional and expert opinion of the 
country" can therefore hardly be regarded as 
correctly setting forth the facts. The reports of 
the Secretaries of War and Navy were shortly 
after given to the press, but the truth con- 
cerning the naval programme of the experts 
was not made known until Mr. Henry A. Wise 
Wood had resigned from the Consulting Board 
of the navy and in so doing had made public 
a caustic letter to the Secretary of the Navy. 
This letter of Mr. Wood had the effect of forc- 
ing the publication of the original report of 
the General Board. It was then learned that 
whereas the General Board in its original 
report of July 30th had called for the laying 
down in the first year of construction of four 
dreadnaughts and four battle-cruisers, the 
pared-down report to a sum stipulated by the 
President and submitted October 12th, re- 
duced the number of battle-cruisers to two 



I/O Leonard Wood 

with large reductions also in the auxiHary 
vessels in the programme; and that Mr. Wil- 
son's programme, actually cut the original 
programme in half ajid called for but two dread- 
naughts and two battle-cruisers ^ instead of four 
eachj the number declared to be absolutely 7ieceS' 
sary by A dmiral Dewey ajid his General Board. 

To their honor be it said that several naval 
officers of the highest rank did not hesitate to 
risk their positions by telling the truth con- 
cerning the vital defects of the naval establish- 
ment, though they were in some cases punished 
for doing so. Admiral Fiske, in an official 
letter to the Secretary, not only declared the 
navy iinprepared but asserted that five years 
would be necessary to get it ready. Admiral 
Fletcher, in a letter to the House Committee on 
Naval Affairs, called attention to " an alarming 
shortage of officers and men" in his own (the 
Atlantic) fleet, on which our defence would 
chiefly be based — a shortage of 5219 men and 
339 officers on the 2 1 ships under his command. 
Admiral Winslow and Commander Stirling 
supported these statements by other data. 

The Pacifist Secretary of the Navy, Jose- 



The Darkening of Counsel 171 

phus Daniels, made false statements con- 
cerning the condition of the navy, and when 
called before the Naval Committee of Con- 
gress said, "We should go on just as if there 
were no war. We have enough men in the 
navy." When the sentence in the report of 
the Navy General Board to the effect "that 
the want of a trained personnel is of even more 
serious importance than construction" was 
read to him in Committee, Mr. Daniels re- 
torted, "We have a trained personnel great 
enough to man every ship in use. I do not 
think the Board would have put that in if 
they had known the facts." — The Board was 
composed of the best naval experts in the 
service under the chairmanship of Admiral 
Dewey. 

"Have we a fleet sufficient to defend both 
coasts?" asked Representative Stevens of Cali- 
fornia. "Yes, sir, altogether sufficient to de- 
fend both coasts," replied the Secretary, 

Is it any wonder that Henry Breckenridge, 
who until he resigned with his chief, was the 
Assistant Secretary of War, should have 
declared that Mr. Daniels was the one man 



172 Leonard W<x)d 

who more than any other had stood in the 
way of the preparation of the American navy 
for war? 

In his report containing his programme for 
naval enlargement, Secretary Daniels had given 
out as a reason for not advocating a larger 
naval programme, that the one adopted was 
the largest that could possibly be constructed 
in the yards of the country'. By showing up 
the falsity of this statement, Mr. Wise Wood 
was able to induce the House Committee on 
Naval Affairs to recommend a considerably 
enlarged programme. To accomplish this, how- 
ever, it had first been necessary to force the 
publication of the programme advocated by 
the General Board of the navy, and when this 
had been done in the manner already explained, 
Mr. Wise Wood went to Charles K. Schwab of 
the Bethlehem Steel Corporation and put to 
him the question whether if Congress were 
ready to appropriate the necessary funds the 
country would be able to construct all the 
ships included in it. ]\Ir. Scliw^ab's reply was 
that not only could the country do this, but 
that he alone would undertake to deliver all the 



The Darkening of Counsel i73 

ships advocated in the original programme of the 
General Board even to the table service. Mr. 
Wise Wood then went to the Massachusetts 
member of the House Naval Affairs Commit- 
tee and reported the interview to him. This 
member asked to be connected by telephone 
with Mr. Schwab, who confirmed the inter- 
view, and as a consequence the House pro- 
gramme was greatly enlarged over that ad- 
vocated by the Administration. 



CHAPTER VII 
"broomstick preparedness" 

Ships voted too late to be of use in war — The President opposes 
the army experts— Wood condemns the Hay Bill — Secretary 
Garrison replaced by the pacifist Baker— "Joker" in Hay 
Bill to rob Wood of Medal of Honor— Henry Ford's attack on 
the Navy League — Privileged libel on a stupendous scale — 
The Navy League sues Mr. Ford and wins — Mr. Wilson 
swings round the circle to advocate mild preparedness — 
"Weasel" addresses— The crisis of the Republican Conven- 
tion of 19 16— Roosevelt refuses to divide his party — Wood 
asks Military Affairs Committee for army of four millions — 
Shows woeful lack of all needed war equipment — The Presi- 
dent falters over the armed ship measure— We drift into war 
—Our explanation is altruism— Mr. Wilson makes his physi- 
cian a Rear Admiral in the Navy— Wood demoted and the 
attempt made to shelve him. 

The Navy Bill was not enacted into law 
until late in the summer of 1916. For reasons 
already explained, the minority of the House 
Naval Committee (Republican) in their rec- 
ommendations somewhat increased the ori- 
ginal estimates of the General Board, and 
even the majority of the committee (Demo- 
cratic) somewhat increased the estimates of 

X74 



"Broomstick Preparedness" 175 

President Wilson. Of all programmes for 
naval expansion, the President's was much 
the smallest and, as already stated, only half 
that which was declared to be necessary by 
the most competent board of naval experts 
in the country. 

In the Senate, the Navy Bill as passed by the 
House was modified in the direction of large 
increases, and, after long delays in Congress, 
Mr. Wilson's opposition was withdrawn ; where- 
upon the bill promptly passed in a form 
providing for a three-year building programme 
to include ten dreadnaughts and six battle- 
cruisers. It is well to enforce the lesson that, 
though our official entry into the war did not 
come until eight months after the bill was 
signed, and though the war continued for 
another nineteen months, none of the capital 
ships provided in this belated measure had 
been constructed when hostilities terminated 
with the signing of the armistice. The reason 
is clear enough. Steel and workmen were 
alike in demand for other purposes, and on this 
account could not be spared — a contingency 
of the kind that had been predicted by 



176 Leonard Wood 

the advocates of preparedness. As Theodore 
Roosevelt said eleven years ago, "When 
once war has broken out it is too late to do 
anything." 

In army legislation, the Administration 
likewise opposed the recommendations of the 
trained experts, in this case of the Army 
General Staff; but it supported instead the 
vicious plan of the adjutant generals of the 
National Guard, a plan which called for a so- 
called "federalization" of the militia, with a 
dual system of control by States and Federal 
authorities. General Wood used his influence 
to defeat this vicious legislation. As he 
expressed it: 

"Such weapons as the Federal Govern- 
ment has must be its weapons and not the 
weapons of any State nor under even a 
limited degree of State control. Those who 
know the State militia and understand and 
appreciate the handicaps under which It 
labors, realize that it has done all that could 
be expected under a fatally defective system, 
a system which makes a high degree of effi- 



"Broomstick Preparedness" 177 

ciency impossible. . . . The regtilar army 
to-day put under administrative control of 
forty-eight different governors would soon 
cease to be a dependable force. The militia 
should be transferred absolutely to Federal 
control. ... In time of emergency we 
want men and not lawsuits. We want a 
weapon that is certain and dependable. 
In my opinion, not less than ninety per cent, 
and perhaps more of the personnel of the 
militia want to establish such a condition 
as I have outlined above." 

The President's failure to support the army 
experts on the Army Bill brought about the 
resignation of Mr. Garrison, the Secretary of 
War, and with him went the excellent As- 
sistant Secretary, Mr. Henry Breckenridge. 
The place of Mr. Garrison was promptly filled 
by Newton D. Baker, who shortly before had 
written to the National Security League that 
he "was a pacifist and was opposed to the 
agitation for preparedness." 

For his attitude in opposing the Hay Bill, 
the unwisdom of whose provisions was soon 



178 Leonard Wood 

to be demonstrated, General Wood was to be 
punished by robbing him of his Medal of 
Honor won in the campaign against Apache 
Indians under Geronimo. This could not, how- 
ever, be accomplished publicly. A "joker" 
was introduced into the bill, but for the success 
of jokers, which are generally introduced 
during a late stage of conference, it is neces- 
sary that they slip through under such vague 
phrasing that their true character does not 
appear, or at least is not made public. Pub- 
licity in this case effectually disposed of those 
clauses of the bill which expressed such a mean- 
spirited hostility to an outspoken public 
servant. 

With the advent of the World War the forces 
of pacifism gained in Henry Ford, the multi- 
millionaire automobile manufacturer, a re- 
cruit whose immense fortune made of him a 
powerful asset. He devised a clever way of 
attacking the Navy League in libellous charges 
concerning its preparedness efforts and one 
which appeared to be free from the risk that 
retribution would be exacted by legal process. 
The speeches of members of Congress being 



"Broomstick Preparedness*' 179 

privileged, Mr. Ford printed as full-page ad- 
vertisements in newspapers and magazines 
throughout the country extracts from two 
violent anti-preparedness speeches by Con- 
gressman Tavenner of Illinois. These speeches 
charged, among other things, that the Navy 
League was organized by "war traffickers" 
for profit. The Navy League at once pub- 
lished a refutation of these charges and of- 
fered Mr. Ford every opportunity to inspect 
all their minutes and books. This he refused 
to do, but in addition to the paid advertise- 
ments, which reached many millions of readers, 
he had two million copies of the libellous 
charges printed by the Government printer at 
Mr. Ford's expense (as is required by law) and 
had these mailed under Government franks, 
thus involving a saving to him of some 
$20,000. 

Since the speech of the Congressman was 
privileged, the Navy League was without re- 
dress from this public defamation imparal- 
leled for magnitude in the history of the country 
and of the world. By a strange accident, 
however, the opportunity of reaching Mr. 



i8o Leonard Wood 

Ford legally was found. It happened that on 
May 1st the release by him of one of his full- 
page advertisements took place two days 
before the same speech appeared in the 
Congressional Record. The Navy League 
thereupon promptly brought suit for libel for 
$100,000. Confronted with his charges, Mr. 
Ford was unable to prove them and took 
refuge behind the lame excuse that he had 
believed them to be true. The Supreme Court 
of the District of Columbia thereupon sus- 
tained the Navy League in its demurrer. 

Mr. Ford had in September, 191 5, con- 
tributed a million dollars to defeat prepared- 
ness, and later he raised his contribution for 
peace propaganda to ten million dollars. He 
opposed the loan raised in the United States 
for the Allies and threatened, according to 
report, to withdraw his deposit from any 
banks that contributed to it. He circularized 
Congress against patriotic songs, preparedness 
plays, and munition workers. In an interview 
with Mr. Henry A. Wise Wood he excused the 
sinking of the Lusitania. He had well-known 
German agents among his advisers and he 



"Broomstick Preparedness" i8i 

decried patriotism and reverence for the flag. 
In May, 19 16, when the Presidential cam- 
paign was on, the Democratic National Head- 
quarters announced that Mr. Ford would 
print advertisements in five hundred news- 
papers in order to advance Mr. Wilson's 
campaign for re-election upon the ground that 
he had "kept us out of war." 

The fight for preparedness was kept up by 
the defence societies in the face of all these 
attacks and evidences of opposition, and the 
spirit of the country was steadily rising to the 
struggle that lay before it. In the winter of 
19 1 5-1 6, the President in public utterances 
came out mildly in favor of preparing the 
national defence, but his utterances were not 
crystallized into action and they lacked the 
ring of conviction. The presidential election 
was to take place in November, 1916, and at 
the end of the preceding January, Mr. Wilson 
made a swing around the circle to deliver 
speeches; but, as in his diplomatic notes, the 
statements of one address were sometimes 
found to be nullified by a speech which would 
be made on the following day. 



1 82 Leonard Wood 

January 29th at Pittsburgh, the President 
said: 

"When you know that there are combus- 
tible materials in the life of the world and 
in your own national life, and that the sky 
is full of floating sparks from a great con- 
flagration, are you going to sit down and 
say it will be time when the fire begins to do 
something about it? I do not believe that 
the fire is going to begin, but I would be 
surer of it if we were ready for the fire. " 

At St. Louis he said to a vast throng : 

"I am anxious, therefore, my fellow- 
citizens, that you should look at the hot 
stuff of war before you touch it; that you 
should be cool ; that you should apply your 
hard business sense to the proposition. 
Shall we be caught unawares and do a 
scientific job like Tyros and Ignoramuses? 
Or shall we be ready? Shall we know how 
to do it; shall we do it to the Queen's taste? 
I know what the answer of America is, but 



"Broomstick Preparedness'* 183 

I want it to be unmistakably uttered, and 
I want it to be uttered now. Because, 
speaking with all solemnity, I assure you 
that there is not a day to be lost; not, 
understand me, because of any new or 
specially critical matter, but because I can- 
not tell twenty -four hours at a time whether 
there is going to be trouble or not. . . . 

"This month should not go by without 
something decisive done by the people of the 
United States by way of preparation of the 
arms of self-vindication and defence. My 
heart burns within me, my fellow-citizens, 
when I think of the importance of this 
matter and of all that is involved. " 

His next sentences appear to have been 
directed especially at General Wood and 
Colonel Roosevelt: 

"I am sorry that there should be anybody 
in the United States who goes about crying 
out for war. There are such men, but they 
are irresponsible men, who do a great deal 
of talking, and they are appealing to some 



1 84 Leonard Wood 

of the most fundamental and dangerous 
passions of the human heart. " 

At Des Moines on February ist he said: 

"There are actually men in America who 
are preaching war, who are preaching the 
duty of the United States to do what it 
never would before, seek entanglement in 
the controversies which have arisen on the 
other side of the water — abandon its habit- 
ual and traditional policy and deliberately 
engage in the conflict which is now engulfing 
the rest of the world. I do not know what 
the standards of citizenship of these gentle- 
men may be. I only know that I for one 
cannot subscribe to those standards." 

Some two months after the return of Mr. 
Wilson from his speaking tour, General Wood 
addressed the Chamber of Commerce of the 
State of New York on "Preparedness for 
National Defence," in which address he said, 
"The time has come not only for serious 
thought; the time has come to do something. " 



''Broomstick Preparedness'* 185 

The real crisis of the nation came with the 
conventions of the Republican and Progressive 
parties held in Chicago in June, 1916. The 
Democratic party had already become com- 
mitted to Woodrow Wilson with his policy of 
pacifism and "watchful waiting" as a sub- 
stitute for the facing of issues. The split 
made in the Republican party in 191 2 had 
not been healed, and resentment of the Pro- 
gressives was still strong over the ruthless 
workings of the Republican steam roller as it 
had operated on that occasion. The prepared- 
ness men of all shades were in consequence 
divided between allegiance to Mr. Roosevelt, 
who of the men that had been in political life 
was the most outspoken advocate of pre- 
paredness, and a group of others who repre- 
sented the "old guard" on pre-war issues and 
were generally in alignment with the elements 
that had defeated Roosevelt in the convention 
of 191 2. Colonel Roosevelt doubted his 
ability to secure the nomination of the Re- 
publican wing of the party and notified Gen- 
eral Wood of his intention to throw his 
influence to him at the proper moment. 



1 86 Leonard Wood 

When the "old guard" had triumphed over 
the Roosevelt forces in the Republican con- 
vention and had nominated Justice Hughes, 
the opportunity had been lost to bring an 
early victory in Europe by facing our re- 
sponsibilities as a nation and at once making 
the preparations which wise foresight would 
have undertaken two years earlier. Roosevelt, 
nominated by the Progressive convention, 
declined to be a wedge dividing his party, threw 
his support to Justice Hughes, and endeavored 
to carry the Progressive party with him. The 
Republican candidate elected to "play safe" 
on most really vital issues, and in so doing he 
lost the confidence of a large element in his 
own party. He was also so badly advised as 
to antagonize the Progressive wing and to give 
affront to the strong leader of the Progressive 
group in California. Inasmuch as Governor 
Johnson held the destinies of California in his 
hand, that State returned him by a large 
majority but threw to Wilson its thirteen 
electoral votes for President, a number alone 
sufficient, as was proved, to have elected the 
Republican candidate had they gone to him. 



''Broomstick Preparedness" 187 

Thus a second time politics had triiimphed 
over patriotism at a Chicago convention of 
the dominant party, and the prolongation of 
the war by at least a year with its frightful 
toll of life and treasure was the price exacted. 
It was the slogan, "He kept us out of war," 
which made Woodrow Wilson President in a 
second successful campaign. 

But the preparedness men, nothing daunted, 
kept up the fight with no diminution of ardor. 
On December i8th, and again in January, 
191 7, General Wood appeared before the 
Senate Sub-Committee on Military Affairs 
sitting with the House Committee on Military 
Affairs and advocated universal military 
training. In the first of these hearings, he 
declared emphatically: 

"In conclusion, I wish to emphasize the 
necessity of prompt preparedness of an 
adequate force of trained men, with the 
necessary arms, equipment, and supplies 
for 4,000,000 men. In my opinion there is 
nothing of more vital importance than that 
we should take measures to this end and 



1 88 Leonard Wood 

take them immediately. We are absolutely 
unprepared in artillery guns and ammuni- 
tion for war and will continue to be so for 
many years under present rate of progress. 
There is a more or less general misconcep- 
tion of the idea of the universal military 
training. Many appear to believe that it 
means large numbers of men standing in 
uniform — an enormous standing army. It 
means quite the reverse. It means the 
maximum number of men trained so that 
they may be efficient soldiers if needed. Its 
effect when the system is in full operation 
will be a relatively small force under arms, 
but an enormous force of men available in 
case of necessity — men who are following 
their normal occupations but with the 
necessary training to be efficient soldiers if 
needed." 

Late in February, as he was returning from 
an inspection trip, General Wood stopped off 
in Ann Arbor and spoke to an audience of 
five thousand students, urging upon them the 
necessity for immediately facing the great 



''Broomstick Preparedness" 189 

problem of getting the country ready for war. 
"All the mobile army of the United States," 
he said, "can be put into the Yale Bowl and 
every man find a seat. Not one man in fifty 
of our citizens can use a high-power rifle"; 
and he urged the adoption of a modified Swiss 
system of universal military training, saying 
that this would be "insurance against war." 
Numbers alone did not count. "When was a 
wolf ever afraid of the size of a fiock of sheep? " 
Gold in itself was a poor weapon ; it needed to 
be stiffened with iron. These were some of the 
striking bolts from his fighting spirit. 

In an address before the students of Stevens 
Institute at Hoboken delivered March 28, 
19 1 7, General Wood startled his hearers by 
repeating some of the statements which he had 
felt compelled to make before the Military 
Affairs Committees. He put these statements 
in the form of startling questions. He showed 
that modem guns have their maximum range 
at near forty -five degrees* elevation, but that 
our best and most modern coast defence guns, 
because of their mounting on defective gun 
carriages, could be elevated only ten degrees; 



190 Leonard Wood 

and that they had further the very serious 
handicap of a quite Umited arc of fire; that the 
modem guns Hkely to be brought against 
them have a cahbre exceeding by four inches 
that of our largest gun; that our one sixteen- 
inch gun, once the "biggest in the world," 
though designed for the defence of New York 
Harbor and though proof -fired thirteen years 
before, had not yet been mounted; that we 
had no heavy railroad artillery, indeed none 
at all with the exception of one 47-inch gun 
and that on an experimental carriage; that 
we had no single modern airplane engine; no 
modern high-speed scouting aeroplane; that at 
the time of the Mexican troubles we had been 
compelled to buy 350 British machine guns, 
using British ammunition, for the reason that 
we had no machine guns of our own; etc. 
The General then continued: "Every foreign 
ambassador knows all about our gims. " And 
further: 

"Now all these questions relate to pre- 
paredness. They relate to preparedness 
which cannot be bought or hurried very 



"Broomstick Preparedness" 191 

greatly. It means organized preparedness; 
things that are done in time of peace. I 
have just been giving you a few points. I 
could go on and greatly amplify this list of 
questions, and they would all, if they were 
honestly answered, be answered: 'We have 
done nothing, practically nothing.'" 

Meanwhile, encouraged by the American 
Government's failure to follow up its words by 
acts, the ruthless actions of the German Gov- 
ernment continued until by April i, 191 7, 
226 American lives had been sacrificed, not 
including twenty-four children bom of foreign 
parents on American soil. Eventually, Ameri- 
can vessels were blockaded by the Germans in 
our own ports, yet the President still faltered 
about arming our ships for defence. When the 
armed ship measure had finally been passed 
with only a twentieth of the people's repre- 
sentatives in opposition, the President dis- 
covered an antiquated law which on a strict 
construction he believed might stand in the 
way of action. Said Alexander Hamilton: 
"The sacred rights of man are not to be 



192 Leonard Wood 

searched for in old documents and musty 
records. They are written as with a sunbeam 
in the whole volume of human nature by the 
hand of divinity itself and can never be erased 
by mortal power." 

And so the nation drifted, but with the 
spirit of the country more and more aroused, 
until on April 2, 191 7, the President appeared 
before the joint houses of Congress, and asked 
for a declaration of war. This transformation 
was the more remarkable by reason of the fact 
that he soon made clear we were to enter the 
war not because Germany had invaded our 
rights and murdered our citizens until the 
condition had long become intolerable, but 
upon the high altruistic ground of saving 
others while not interested for ourselves. Yet, 
strangely enough, the declaration of war itself 
had stated that, "the Imperial German Gov- 
ernment has committed repeated acts of war 
against the Government and the people of 
the United States of America." And the 
official explanation by the Administration of 
our intervention on altruistic motives has been 
taken up and echoed by a noisy claque until 



"Broomstick Preparedness" 193 

large numbers of our people have become 
confused. Were this the reason, we should 
have intervened after the rape of Belgium and 
northern France — not in April, 191 8, after a 
lapse of two and a half years, during which 
time civilization had more than once been 
near annihilation, while we stood by as 
"innocent bystanders" shielded by the demo- 
cratic armies of the Allies. Since it was now 
dangerous to oppose the war, the pacifist 
element executed a peculiar somersault setting 
up the cry, "We are for this war in order to 
end all wars," a natural prelude to the later 
craze for internationalism which is now being 
engineered from the same sources. 

On April 6th, by declaration of Congress, 
we found ourselves not only at war — as we 
had been for some months — but admitting 
that a state of war already existed by virtue 
of Germany's acts. Two months later Secre- 
tary Baker issued an official bulletin (Official 
War Bulletin of June 7, 191 7) in which he 
admitted the great disorder and confusion of 
getting things started in his department after 
the declaration of war, but added, "It is a 
13 



194 Leonard Wood 

happy confusion. I delight in the fact that 
when we entered this war we were not hke our 
adversary ready for it, anxious for it, prepared 
for it, and inviting it. Accustomed to peace, 
we were not ready." In his next annual 
message the President declared, " We made no 
preparation for such a contingency. We would 
have been almost ashamed to prepare for it, 
as if we were suspicious of ourselves and of our 
own comrades and neighbors." Mr. George 
Creel, head of the ofhcial press bureau, had 
also declared to an audience in the city of 
Washington that he was proud that we had 
made no preparation for the war. The re- 
sponse was not exactly what he expected, and 
he thereupon contradicted the reports in the 
press, explaining that no stenographer had 
been present and that he had been incorrectly 
reported. The New York Times then pointed 
out that its stenographer had been present, and 
the reports were accurate, whereupon Mr. 
Creel relapsed into silence. 

Two significant acts of the President were 
taken at the solemn moment of making our 
entry into the war. One of these was fraught 



''Broomstick Preparedness" 195 

with grave consequences, and both tended to 
lower at a critical moment the morale of the 
fighting arms of the service. Both indicated 
but too clearly that the path to promotion, 
whether in the army or navy, lay not in meri- 
torious service to the country, but in a com- 
plete subservience to the Commander-in-Chief, 
the political head of the nation. 

The much discussed merit system had 
shortly before been adopted in the navy to 
replace promotion by seniority alone, a system 
which smothered initiative and put a premium 
on strict adherence to service regulations. 
The one great danger of the new system, and 
one which was everjrwhere recognized, was 
that it left the door wide open to favoritism 
on the part of superior officers. It was hoped, 
however, that the spirit of the service would 
triumph over this weakness. Hardly had the 
law come into force when the President of the 
United States elevated his personal physician. 
Lieutenant Cary T. Grayson, to the rank and 
pay of a rear-admiral in the navy. Of this 
appointment Sea Power, the organ of the 
Navy League, said editorially: 



196 Leonard Wood 

"Let us discuss frankly the case of Dr. 
Grayson. He entered the service in 1904, 
and after twelve years of duty, of which per- 
haps the most arduous has been carrying 
the White House shawl strap, he is promoted 
to the rank of rear admiral with all the pay 
and emoluments which go with that honored 
rank usually conferred as a reward for long 
and worthy service. 

"He is jumped over the heads of men who 
have done their legitimate duty on ships 
and in the fever fens of the tropics. He 
passes over 130 of these and is given a life 
position with a higher permanent rank than 
was ever before reached by a doctor in the 
history of the navy . . . the whole thing is 
an indecency that is resented by the entire 
navy and by all decent men who know the 
facts." 

Is there, perhaps, a connection between the 
hostility which was thereafter shown by the 
Secretary of the Navy toward the Navy 
League? By order of the Secretary, members 
of the League were forbidden entrance to 



''Broomstick Preparedness'' 197 

naval stations, the comfort kits which were 
such a godsend to the sailors, were refused by 
the Department. 

Confirmation by the Senate of the appoint- 
ment of Grayson was held up and died with 
the outgoing Congress. It was hoped that the 
President would see fit not to present it again 
after the new Congress had convened, but he 
refused to recede even under a fierce fire of 
criticism, and the appointment, more or less 
lost sight of amid the welter of vital war 
measures that soon supervened, was at last 
confirmed. 

On March 25th, scarcely a week before the 
President appeared before the joint houses of 
Congress to ask for a declaration of war 
against Germany, the country was treated to 
a sensation when it was announced that the 
Department of the East, commanded by 
General Wood, had been broken up into three 
parts, that the two larger sections had already 
been placed under the command of his juniors, 
and that he had been given the option of exile 
at Manila or Hawaii or of taking command of 
the new and relatively unimportant South- 



198 Leonard Wood 

eastern Department, with headquarters at 
Charleston, South CaroHna. He chose the 
latter post as a storm of protest was going 
up at this attempt to side-track him. Senator 
John W. Weeks, a graduate of the United 
States Naval Academy, a veteran of the 
Spanish-American War, and a man thoroughly 
familiar with the military situation, gave out 
in an interview: 

"In due time those responsible for weak- 
ening our military organization at such a 
time as this will have to explain the reason 
for doing this. In the meantime those 
competent to judge will have one opin- 
ion, that it is a pernicious piece of party 
politics." 

Ex-President Taft afterwards referred to 
this sensational demotion of a great American 
soldier as follows: 

"The public supposed that General Wood 
would be consulted and given an important 
place in the organization of the army. 



** Broomstick Preparedness" 199 

Instead he was relieved from duty at Gover- 
nor's Island and sent to Charleston. It is 
now known that this was personally directed 
by the Conimander-in- Chief, probably for 
the purpose of indicating displeasure of 
General Wood's criticism of the policy of 
non-preparation. " 

Speaking of Wood's campaigning for defence 
of the nation and its punishment, the Scientific 
American, always well informed concerning 
the army and navy, said editorially : 

"It took no little courage to do this at 
a time when the Administration regarded 
even the mention of military preparation 
as a breach of that neutrality 'even in 
thought' which it was enjoining upon the 
American people. 

"The event has proved that Wood was 

right. 

"It was the confident expectation that 
the soldier who had so nobly jeopardized 
his career for the sake of his country would 
be called at once into the intimate counsels 



200 Leonard Wood 

of the Administration now that the crisis 
which he foretold had actually come upon 
us. An able, far-sighted, and highly ex- 
perienced general, such as he, who holds 
also the affection and unbounded confidence 
of his fellow-citizens, is surely, at such an 
hour as this, a most valuable asset to his 
country. And we take it that no other 
questions than those of his record and his 
proved ability should determine the degree 
of his employment. 

"Hence it came about that, when in the 
same breath in which it was announced that 
we were at war, we were told that our 
highest ranking officer, the very soldier who 
had labored to awaken the country to the 
imminence of that war, had been removed 
to a minor command, — the country simply 
stood aghast." 

John Jay Chapman in a communication to 
the New York Times, said : 

"Perhaps nothing that President Wilson 
could have done would so have shaken pub- 
lic confidence. 



''Broomstick Preparedness" 201 

"General Wood is the author and embodi- 
ment of the country's present mood. . . . 

"General Wood is the man of the hour. 

"For the Administration in the present 
crisis to throw away its greatest asset in 
the way of popular confidence has cast into 
many minds a doubt as to whether the Ad- 
ministration is in earnest about the war. 
To blanket General Wood is the first thing 
an anti-war party would have done if it had 
come into power. . . . 

"It would seem, at any rate, as if this 
slight to General Wood must tend to in- 
crease his importance by focusing upon him 
the gratitude and admiration of every 
American who has watched his course. " 



CHAPTER VIII 



AT WAR 

Rise of the war spirit upon entering the war — "The President's 
Wax" — General Wood recommends calling of reserve officers 
— Is excluded from counsels with the Allied Missions — 
Wood receives ovations in Southern cities — He is again 
demoted and assigned to command at Camp Funston — We 
borrow our war equipment from the Allies — Wood's recom- 
mendation concerning machine guns is turned down — Inves- 
tigation of War Department by Military Affairs Committee 
— Senator Chamberlain given the lie by the President — The 
airplane scandal — Wood's report on lack of air control at 
front — The Emergency Fleet Corporation — The Army Sup- 
ply System — Anxiety during the winter of 19 17-18 — Mr. 
Baker predicts five hundred thousand men will be in France 
"early" in 1918 — General Wood goes to France — He is 
wounded — After discharge from hospital reaches New York 
as German drive opens — Makes startling statements before 
Military Affairs Committee — Found fit for field service by 
Medical Board — Britain's desperate appeal to America for 
troops — The "Transport Miracle" — Ex-Prcsident Roosevelt 
cited on War Department breakdown. 

As soon as the opportunity was afforded by 
the action of the Administration, the country 
forgot at once all political differences, as well 
as its discontent over official dilatory tactics. 
It now promptly rallied behind the President 



At War 203 

and gave him a whole-hearted support in the 
tasks which lay before him. Even before the 
declaration of war, Senator Lodge, the Re- 
publican leader in the Senate, had pledged the 
Administration the unfailing support of his 
party in all war measures, and it is now pleas- 
ant to recall that Senator John Sharp Williams, 
the Democratic leader, declared on the same 
floor after hostilities had terminated, that 
Republicans had supported the President on 
all war measures better than had the members 
of his own political party. Mr. Roosevelt, 
the most outspoken critic of the Administra- 
tion, went to Washington to call upon the 
President and offer him his hearty support. 

The support of the people was no less strong 
and ready than that of its leaders in Congress. 
The draft, which now became absolutely neces- 
sary, was accepted, not under protest, but as a 
patriotic duty and privilege. History does 
not recall another such example, and it is to 
the eternal credit of Leonard Wood and Theo- 
dore Roosevelt and the defence societies that 
this astounding elevation of the country's 
morale had been accomplished in the face 



204 Leonard Wood 

of administrative disapproval. All the huge 
war loans and all Red Cross, Y. M. C. A., and 
other war subscriptions, were promptly over- 
subscribed. 

History must, however, record as one of the 
strange and inexplicable facts of the situation 
that in the prodigious task and responsibility 
which now was laid upon him, the President 
chose to put personal politics above patriotism, 
to look upon all his former critics as enemies, 
to repel the support of the country as a whole; 
and, unlike any of the leaders of the Allied 
Powers, to conduct America's war effort as a 
personal, rather than as a national, undertak- 
ing. He chose not to recognize the offer of 
support tendered by the Republican leaders, 
he would advise with none but his own politi- 
cal henchmen, even ignoring those patriotic 
and loyal Democrats like Senator Cham- 
berlain, who had long advocated prepar- 
edness; and, until their incompetence began 
to threaten popular support, the President 
filled all important posts with trusted political 
followers. 

In the inspired biography of Colonel House, 



THE KANSAS CFTY STAK 



«0F 
ROOSEVELT 



NEW YORK OFnce 

)47 MADISON AVENUE 



Decerr.ber 28th, 1910. 



Dear Leonard: 

Is it true that officers at Camp 
Punston have been discharged because of their 
activities a^inst conscientious objectors? 

I have had a rather severe attack of 
inflaomatory rheumatism ,but am on the high road 
to recovery. 

Always yours. 



7./€. 



Major-General Leonard Wood, 
Camp Ftmston, Xansas. 

ine of the last letters written by Theodore Roosevelt. This shows that 

he looked forward to early recovery. Nine days later he 

passed from life as he lay asleep 



At War 205 

scrupulously revised after its first publication 
in the press, we read: 

"From the very start he [Col. House] 
knew that there were just two ways in which 
the war could be won: By outmatching 
Germany's astonishing achievements in co- 
ordination of national effort and by attack- 
ing Germany and Austria from within. He 
thoroughly agreed with Mr. Wilson that 
American political institutions would not 
lend themselves to such departures from 
national custom as the erection of a Coali- 
tion Cabinet. ... He held, with the 
President, that the extraordinary amount 
of responsibility entrusted under the Con- 
stitution to the President, made it incum- 
bent upon the Chief Executive to have the 
support of men of his own party. . . . 
To him will go the credit for victory, or the 
obloquy of defeat. . . . 

"No, a Coalition Cabinet was rejected by 
Colonel House's evenly balanced mind. 
The idea had advantages, but they were 
advantages which spring from playing to 



2o6 Leonard Wood 

the galleries. The announcement of such a 
step would be hailed by all sections of the 
country as a mark of disinterestedness, a 
proof of 'non-partisanship. But what would 
such tributes avail if the war engine were 
slowed up? . . . Successful administra- 
tion depends to a great degree upon com- 
plete unity in policy — which requires unity 
in thought. The President was convinced 
that in a situation so fraught with delicate 
questions and with the great objects he had 
set himself to attain, it was more than ever 
necessary for him to have the support of 
men who saw with him eye to eye." 

General Wood remained still for some weeks 
in command of the department of the East, 
which embraced the entire Atlantic Seaboard, 
and was charged with the inspection of more 
than half of the National Guard of the country. 
He was therefore in a position where he might 
accomplish much in pushing the national de- 
fence, and he set himself to work with his usual 
energy and foresight. Almost immediately, he 
recommended to Secretary Baker that the 



At War 207 

Reserve Corps, comprising from 800 to 900 
officers, largely resident within his department, 
should be called for intensive training and 
placed in two camps to be located one in the 
North and the other in the Southern district; 
and, further, that the sea-coast fortifications 
be utilized for the training of suitably qualified 
young men, making use for their equipment of 
the old type of Springfield and the Krag- 
Jorgensen rifles. 

On America's intervention in the war. 
Great Britain and France, and later Italy and 
other Allied nations, dispatched to Washing- 
ton important missions composed of the most 
distinguished men, so as to acquaint the 
American Government with the desperateness 
of the military situation for the Allies, the need 
of the utmost haste in making its force felt 
without a moment of unnecessary delay, and 
also, if possible, to prevent a repetition of 
those costly mistakes into which they had 
fallen. Not only were these lessons of expe- 
rience frankly confessed, but late mihtary 
knowledge and war secrets were generously 
communicated by military and naval experts 



2o8 Leonard Wood 

who at once went into conference with those 
of our own services. As the ranking general 
of the army and the mihtary head of its most 
important department, it was the duty of 
General Wood, until his transfer should be- 
come effective, to receive officially these 
august missions, which included such states- 
men as Balfour and such military chieftains 
as Joffre, and to accompany them to the Na- 
tional Capital. The studied affronts which 
were there perpetrated in excluding him from 
the military councils which took place, as well 
as from social functions, not unnaturally led 
members of the missions, quite without intent 
of offering offence, to ask questions no less em- 
barrassing to the Administration than they 
were to General Wood. 

On the General's arrival at his new post at 
Charleston, the Southern people turned out 
en masse and received him with public ac- 
clamation. It was his duty to travel about 
his department for the purpose of making 
inspection as well as to select the sites for 
cantonments? of the new National Army, and 
this tour of duty soon resolved itself into a 



At War 209 

series of great ovations. In each city that he 
visited he was met by delegations of citizens, 
and at Atlanta and Little Rock audiences of 
sixty thousand people gathered to see and 
hear him. His addresses made no reference 
to the recent unpleasant incident in his career, 
but were devoted to spurring the people to the 
utmost effort in order to win the war. 

After but three months as Commander of 
the Southeastern Department, another at- 
tempt was made to side-track General Wood, 
and this time by transfer to the command of 
the military cantonment located at Camp 
Funston in Kansas. On arriving at this post 
there was again a great outpouring of citizens 
to receive and welcome him. Here, as com- 
mander of the post, it became his duty without 
formal orders to train the 89th Division of the 
National Army which was assembling there, 
and his phenomenal success as an effective and 
inspiring commander was here to be strikingly 
demonstrated. 

The primary needs of our armies in the way 
of equipment were service rifles, both light 
and heavy machine guns, light and heavy field 



2IO Leonard Wood 

artillery, airplanes (especially combat planes), 
tanks, uniforms, shoes, blankets, etc. ; and, in 
order to get them overseas, ships. The failure 
to secure these, or in other instances to get 
them within a reasonable time, was due in 
some cases quite as much to wrong-headed 
decisions on vital issues, as it was to dilatory 
tactics and incompetence. It was nineteen 
months from the date of our intervention in 
the war to the signing of the armistice, yet we 
had to rely upon France and Great Britain 
for almost our entire equipment outside of 
service rifles and uniforms. This decision to 
borrow rather than to manufacture our equip- 
ment had been absolutely necessary in order 
that we should take part in the war at all, 
notwithstanding the fact that the French 
Government in the matter of artillery was 
terribly handicapped at the moment by the 
necessity of replacing the 2500 to 3000 pieces 
of artillery which had been lost to Italy in the 
terrible Caporetto disaster. The decision in- 
volved for France the retaining of much of her 
trained man-power behind the lines. 

The Lewis machine gun, the invention of an 



At War 211 

American army officer adopted by Great Brit- 
ain with such success, was at the time of our 
entry into the war available for quantity pro- 
duction in the United States. This gun had 
been tested and highly approved as a suitable 
light machine gun by a Board appointed for 
the purpose by General Wood. The inventor, 
Colonel Lewis, had however criticised the coast- 
gun carriages that had been invented by the 
head of the Ordnance Bureau and supplied to 
our coast fortifications; and he was as a con- 
sequence in disfavor with the chief. Whether 
or not because of this disapproval, the Lewis 
gun was rejected and the War Department 
began to experiment for both light and heavy 
machine guns. The result was the official 
approval of the modified Colt weapons which 
became known as Browning machine guns, 
but after seventeen months of delay the de- 
partment was unable to supply them in suffi- 
cient quantity. The direct consequence was 
that the American Expeditionary Force had to 
be equipped with the inferior Chaiichat ma- 
chine gun, which employed an ammunition 
different from our service rifle ammunition, 



212 Leonard Wood 

with resulting large difficulties for the supply 
department. The reason assigned for this 
costly error in the War Department's history 
of its effort {The War with Germany), is that 
because the Brownings possessed such supe- 
riority over any other machine guns in use by 
any army, the Germans might conceivably 
capture one, rapidly manufacture it in suffi- 
cient quantities to supply their armies and so 
take away our advantage — we took seventeen 
months to get a very moderate number of 
pieces ready. This official report goes on to 
say : ' ' Production of all the types (of machine 
guns) was pressed and the advantages of pre- 
paredness illustrated^ Again, speaking of the 
men that could have been equipped with 
machine guns (but were not) the report says: 
"In fact this [non] production was one of the 
striking features of our war effort. It would 
have resulted, if the figliting had been prolonged, 
in a greatly increased volume of fire on the 
part of the American troops." (The italics 
are ours in both instances.) 

The Senate Military Affairs Committee, of 
which Senator Chamberlain was chairman. 



At War 213 

undertook an investigation of the War Depart- 
ment during the winter of 19 17-18, and after 
six weeks Hstening to testimony concerning the 
confusion and incompetence which were being 
displayed. Thoroughly disheartened and worn 
out, he declared at a banquet of the Na- 
tional Security League in New York on Janu- 
ary 19, 19 18, that, "the Government has fallen 
down on war work because of mefificiency in 
every bureau and department . " A day or two 
later the President retorted, "Senator Cham- 
berlain's statement as to the present inaction 
and ineffectiveness of the Government is an 
astonishing and absolutely unjustifiable dis- 
tortion of the truth." 

There have been few finer patriots or more 
valiant advocates of preparedness than the 
Democratic senator from Oregon, and the 
question will arise in many minds whether 
after sitting for six weeks listening to testi- 
mony concerning the work of the War Depart- 
ment he was not better informed upon the 
subject than was the President of the United 
States. Senator Chamberlain admitted that 
"every bureau and department" used in his 



214 Leonard Wood 

statements was too sweeping, but he thereupon 
proceeded to present some of the startling facts 
elicited by his committee and followed it by- 
proposing the formation of a war cabinet with 
representatives from Congress. This the Presi- 
dent stubbornly opposed, and he succeeded in 
defeating it ; but the net result of the incident 
was a really serious waking up within the War 
Department, and for this Senator Chamberlain 
is entitled to the credit. 

The investigation of the airplane scandal, 
which after much opposition was at last or- 
dered, showed that almost the entire appro- 
priation of $640,000,000 had been wasted. 
In accord with the War Department's habitual 
policy, a plan to construct twenty-two thou- 
sand planes to be used in the campaign of 1918 
had been widely advertised throughout the 
country by the official press bureau, and the 
Secretary of War gave out frequent rosy re- 
ports of progress, as, for example, the one in 
February, 191 8, that the "peak of production" 
would soon be reached . In so far as the vitally 
essential combat planes were concerned, our 
effort along this line was practically negligible 



At War 215 

up to the signing of the armistice. The de- 
fective combat planes which in small nimibers 
were supplied at the front have been declared 
responsible for the deaths of some of our best 
a\'iators. 

Returning from inspection of the American 
front just pre\"ious to the German drive of 
March, 191 8, General Wood reported officially : 

"So far as can be learned the Germans 
have taken our promised aerial fleet as one 
which is going to appear in the battle areas 
as scheduled and have built to meet it. 
The American fighting aeroplane is as yet 
stranger to the battlefields of Europe and 
our a\'iation service is thus far pathetically 
unprepared. The American Di\'ision which 
I visited was without any air ser^'ice other 
than that furnished by the French, which 
latter was limited in character because of 
demands on their own front. German 
planes came at will over our lines and on one 
of the days that I was with General Bullard's 
Di\'ision, a German plane engaged in photo- 
graphic work came down so close to the 



2i6 Leonard Wood 

ground that our men were firing at it with 
revolvers. Our failure to provide aero- 
planes and to live up to the schedule which 
was expected of us has been a cause of bitter 
disappointment and no small amount of 
embarrassment, and, as I said above, the 
enemy has taken our statements very 
seriously and prepared to meet them effec- 
tively." 

The ships which were so badly needed to 
transport our men and supplies abroad did not 
materialize. To head the Emergency Fleet 
Corporation, the President called the dis- 
tinguished builder of the Panama Canal, but 
he made all the decisions of General Goethals 
subject to approval by an admiralty lawyer 
from San Francisco who was at the head of the 
Shipping Board. The public at last became 
exasperated when two vitally important 
months had been squandered in a deadlock 
within this double-headed organization, a 
difficulty which the President delayed to 
remedy. General Goethals wisely opposed the 
granting of almost unlimited contracts upon 




General Wood in iqi8 



At War 217 

the vicious "cost plus" system with its en- 
couragement of inefficiency, as he did the large 
scale construction of obsolete types of wooden 
ships; and his wisdom has since been confirmed 
by our experience in constructing these almost 
worthless vessels. 

In discussing the equipment of the American 
Expeditionary Force, the War Department's 
official report {The War with Germany) says: 
"The army in France always had sufficient 
food and clothing." Captain Archie Roose- 
velt commanded a company in the famous 
First American Division, a division which had 
nearly 100 per cent, of casualties. He reports 
that his men were without suitable shoes dur- 
ing hard campaigning, and that after all at- 
tempts to secure them through official channels 
had failed, he wrote home and obtained them 
promptly. His wife and his father acting to- 
gether bought and sent to his command at 
their own expense 250 pairs of shoes which 
arrived at a critical time. He says: 

"To refute the dehberate lies put forth by 
those who wish to show what their efforts 



2i8 Leonard Wood 

accomplished, I will list some of the supplies 
of our division when in the trenches nine 
months after we had declared war with 
Germany. It can be seen from General 
Pershing's report that the condition was 
but Httlc improved in November, 1918, after 
we had been in the war one year and seven 
months." 

He then states that the shoes, uniforms, caps, 
helmets, gas-masks, rifles and pack equipment, 
auto rifles and machine guns, grenades, mor- 
tars and mortar ammunition, signal equip- 
ment (with instructions in French), field 
artillery and its ammunition, ration carts and 
wagons, artillery horses, and aeroplanes had 
practically all been supplied from other than 
American sources, and that some were good 
and others bad. He then goes on to say : 

"In the United States, those conducting 
the war never had to face facts. They 
dwelt in the realm of fancy. On the other 
side Pershing was faced with the total 
annihilation of his forces and lasting dis- 



At War 219 

grace to the United States and himself. 
The situation was such as to bring out the 
best in every decent man. I believe that 
even the small minded politicians and staff 
officers in the United States, if they had 
been fighting in Europe, would have soon 
found out that mere lying statements about 
things which never existed gave no results 
in the fighting line." 

The ships constructed by the Emergency 
Fleet Corporation, even though it was eventu- 
ally taken over by that genius of construction, 
Mr. Schwab, played but a subordinate r61e in 
our troop transport. Half of our troops were 
transported to Europe by Great Britain, others 
in French and Italian vessels, and so far as 
carried in ships under American control, these 
were very largely the formerly interned Ger- 
man and Austrian vessels which had been 
taken over, and the Dutch ships which had to 
be seized in the emergency. 

In January, 191 7, neariy three months be- 
fore our entry into the war. General Wood 
in a hearing before the Joint Military Affairs 



220 Leonard Wood 

Committees of Congress had urged the raising 
at once of an army of four miUion men with 
its full equipment in rifles, artillery, etc. No 
heed was paid by the War Department to this 
warning. 

The military campaigns of 191 7 closed with 
a most discouraging outlook for the Allied 
Powers, and with America's powerful aid now 
assured for the future it was certain that Ger- 
many would strike with all her force in a des- 
perate drive at the beginning of the season of 
191 8. Anxiety was intense throughout the 
preceding winter. Congressman, afterward 
Senator, Medill McCormick, w^ho had gone to 
Europe for the purpose of obtaining first-hand 
knowledge of the situation, was told by 
Premier Lloyd George that "America was not 
using its big men in the war," and inquired 
what had happened to General Wood. He 
said he w^ould like to see General Wood in the 
Allied War Council. 

The Senate Military Affairs Committee had 
the Secretary of War on the stand, to state, 
among other things, how large an American 
army he was assured of having ready in Europe 



At War 221 

at the opening of the campaign of 191 8. Mr. 
Baker gave the committee assurance that 
"early" in 191 8 — Senator Weeks states that 
to him he gave the date as February 1 5th — he 
expected to have five hundred thousand men 
in France. The committee expressed its 
scepticism, appearing to have the same degree 
of faith in this statement as in the rosy forecast 
concerning the aeroplane fleet that was to 
smother the German army. 

General Wood had now about completed 
the training of the 89th Division of the Na- 
tional Army, and, like other prospective divi- 
sion commanders to be ordered for field service, 
he was sent to France to first become ac- 
quainted with conditions at the front. He 
inspected the British, French, and American 
fronts and was, by the Allied generals and 
statesmen, shown courtesies in keeping with 
his rank and his record as a soldier. 

On January 27th, while at Fere-en-Tar- 
denois in the company of a number of French 
and American officers, Wood was watching the 
work of a French mortar being operated by a 
French crew. The shell detonated inside the 



222 Leonard Wood 

gun blowing the latter to pieces. The gun 
crew and eighty per cent, of the party watching 
it were either killed or wounded. The four 
officers on either side of General Wood were 
killed outright. Six fragments of metal passed 
through the General's clothing, tore off a por- 
tion of his sleeve, and two of these fragments 
killed the officers on either side of him. A 
fragment passed through the thick biceps of 
the General's left arm and lodged in the arm- 
pit. He was the only man within twelve feet 
of the gun who was not killed outright. His 
woimd was dressed in the field hospital, and 
the next day he motored to Paris to be treated 
in the French officers' hospital in the Hotel 
Ritz, from which he was discharged in three 
weeks — an evidence of his excellent physical 
condition. 

On General Wood's return to New York in 
March, in accordance with custom where 
officers are to be given command in the field, 
he was called before a medical board for a 
special physical examination to determine his 
fitness for field service. The board was a dis- 
tinguished one and included Dr. Billings and 



At War 22;^, 

Dr. Charles Mayo, the celebrated Rochester 
physician. Wood was by this board pro- 
nounced entirely fit for field service. This fact 
is of interest, because a whispering propaganda 
was later widely circulated that the reason for 
detaching him from his command on the eve 
of its departure for the front was physical un- 
fitness. It might here be added that he suc- 
cessfully passed another physical examination 
before a different medical board in the late 
fall of 191 8, just before the loth Division was 
expected to sail for the front. 

What General Wood had seen of the critical 
situation at the Western front, and of the 
preparations being made by Germany to over- 
whelm the Allied armies, made it his duty to 
acquaint the American Government with this 
alarming situation. Of the five hundred 
thousand men who, as Secretary Baker had as- 
sured the Military Affairs Committee, would 
be at the front at this time, there were actually 
but four divisions or about one hundred thou- 
sand men in the trenches. Arriving in Wash- 
ington, Wood found at the War Department 
confusion combined with apparent content- 



224 Leonard Wood 

ment and his attempt to see the Commander- 
in-Chief was rebuffed. He was, however, 
promptly summoned before the MiUtary Af- 
fairs Committee, and his frankly told story did 
much to instill life into the War Department. 
The expected German drive was launched 
on March 2ist as General Wood was before 
the Military Affairs Committee. Tearing 
through the Allied lines in Picardy for an ad- 
vance of some thirty miles, the German forces 
were at last halted by French reserves des- 
patched by Foch just as the Paris-Calais life- 
line had been cut near Amiens, and that great 
city brought under long-range fire. Halted 
here, another push was made by the Germans 
in the Flanders section which so overwhelmed 
the British armies that General Haig an- 
nounced that his army "had its back to the 
wall." The suspense was terrible and civiliza- 
tion came nearer to collapse than at any other 
time in the history of the war. But again 
French reserves were able to reach the critical 
area at the last moment, and the Germans 
were finally halted upon the slopes of Alt. 
Kemmel. 



At War 225 

After the debacle of March 21st, in which 
the British Fifth Army had been routed in 
Picardy, Lloyd George sent a desperate appeal 
to President Wilson to get the American troops 
over. The answer of the President came 
promptly, in which he promised to do this if 
Great Britain "would carry her share." In 
this crisis British ships were pulled out of the 
trades, thus robbing the island nation of two 
hundred thousand tons of essential cargoes and 
holding up shipments of perishable supplies 
from many of the British colonies. The re- 
sult of this great sacrifice on the part of Great 
Britain was that one million Americans — sixty 
per cent, or more of them American troops — 
had reached France by Independence Day. 
On this date President Wilson and Secretary 
Baker both issued congratulatory messages to 
the American people upon the achievement of 
"this transport miracle"; but neither of them 
mentioned in his message the part of Great 
Britain in the "miracle." 

Furthermore, the War Department's ex- 
planation of its conduct of the war {The War 
with Germany), written by Colonel Ayres and 

IS 



226 Leonard Wood 

published in 1919, belittled the part of Great 
Britain in the transportation of our troops 
overseas. In a defence of this report against 
attack Colonel Ayres said (Boston Evenmg 
Transcript of September 3, 1919): "The fact 
is that the British shipping used in the spring 
of 191 8 did not consist of cargo ships but 
almost entirely of passenger liners which the 
British were glad to operate at the prices we 
paid and in which they reserved for themselves 
the cargo space." 

It is important that the American public 
should know the stark truth concerning what 
Great Britain's supreme sacrifice was in this 
crisis of civilization. Sir Joseph Maclay, the 
British shipping controller, has fortunately 
supplied us with the facts. These were given 
out in an interview which was published in the 
New York Times of August 4, 191 8. Some- 
what abridged, his statements are as follows: 
» 

"On the average about sixty per cent, of 
the American troops have been carried in 
British ships, and, as I will explain later on, 
the proportion is steadily rising. . . . 



At War 227 

"After the German offensive opened in 
March, we had to make a big effort. I may 
add that of the 638,000 troops carried in the 
months of April, May, and June, 331,000 
were accommodated in British ships. . . . 

"We are working to promote a common 
cause, and we are not patting ourselves on 
the back for what we are doing. But I 
might add, since the fact may not be well 
known, that we are only able to face these 
new responsibilities by sacrificing for the 
time, not only British, but imperial interests. 

"Ships which under the normal conditions 
were engaged in the trade between the 
British Islands and the Far East, Australia 
and India, have had to be withdrawn from 
service, and we have been compelled to 
sacrifice to a very large extent the commu- 
nications between the mother country and 
the Dominions. Of the manner in which 
the people of the Dominions have bowed 
to the compelling circumstances, it has been 
really splendid, but there is more in it even 
than that. 

"This concentration of shipping has 



228 Leonard Wood 

meant the severing of trade associations 
built up during long periods of years. Every 
business man well understands the character 
of that sacrifice, for there is no saying when 
those abandoned services can be resumed. 
That statement may suggest the character 
of the sacrifice which the British people are 
making in order to facilitate the movement 
of American troops." 

In his testimony before the Military Affairs 
Committee at the hearing of December i8, 
1916, General Wood had set forth the urgent 
need of training and equipping without delay 
an army of four million men. On his return 
from the front in March, 191 8, he urged this 
again with even greater insistence, now making 
the figure five million instead of four million. 
Lieutenant General Young, ex-Presidents 
Roosevelt and Taft, and others who knew the 
terrible need, echoed this warning. Says ex- 
President Roosevelt, writing in the fall of 191 8 : 

"When last March General Wood and 
General Young and Mr. Taft and the pres- 



At War 229 

ent writer asked for the immediate raising 
of an army of five million troops (we meant 
fighting soldiers, and not an alloy of forty 
per cent, of non-combatants) our purpose 
was not rhetorical. But to President Wil- 
son the matter seemed primarily one of 
competitive rhetoric. Obviously he felt 
uneasy about the proposal and treated it as 
one which could be deftly put aside by 
adroit use of language. Accordingly, with 
marked histrionic effect, he asked, 'why 
Hmit the army' to the five million we pro- 
posed, and announced that he wished an 
army 'without limit.' This was highly 
satisfactory as rhetoric. But the action of 
the President, taken through his Secretary 
of War, showed that it was merely rhetoric. 
The phrase was an 'army without limit'; 
the fact was that the army was fixed at a 
much lower limit than that which we had 
asked, and was thus fixed six months after 
we urged immediate action. Secretary 
Baker did not set himself to meet our 
greatest military need of to-day, which is 
a thorough mobilization of our whole man- 



230 Leonard Wood 

power for service in our armies and in our 
war industries. He set himself to prevent 
the meeting of this need. Congress last 
spring made ready to go ahead with the 
'fight or work' plan. But Mr. Baker, 
acting for the President, intervened. He 
asked for delay, for procrastination, and of 
course thereby paralyzed Congressional ac- 
tion. He protested against the enlarge- 
ment of the draft-age limits. He protested 
against planning more than a few months 
in advance. He said that we were 'many 
months ahead of our original hope in re- 
gard to the transportation of men' over- 
seas; but he omitted to add that this was 
because the original plans were hopelessly 
inadequate. 

"Never in our history has there been 
more fatuous incompetence than that dis- 
played, alike in plan and action, by the 
War Department during the first nine 
months after we entered the war. 

"It was Ludendorff who effectively re- 
vised the plans of President Wilson and 
Secretary Baker. 



At War 231 

"Then the Enghsh lent us ships, and we 
really began to send men abroad, until we 
had perhaps a million soldiers and over half 
as many non-combatants across. We ac- 
tually did what we ought to have done, and 
by the exercise of moderate efficiency would 
have done, just one year previously. But 
in June the drive for the time being halted, 
and immediately Mr. Baker proposed a 
reversion to our former Rip Van Winkle 
slumber. . . . 

"Nor is it only our army as to which 
there is now failure to provide for the future. 
The same is true for the navy. During the 
first six months of the war the navy was 
almost as badly handled as the army, and 
it has not yet recovered from its complete 
mismanagement during the previous four 
years. Four years ago. Admiral Bradley 
Fiske dared to tell the truth about naval 
conditions. He thereby rendered a very 
great service to the country, and for doing 
this the authorities punished him, exactly 
as Wood was punished for similar truth- 
telling; and thereby in both cases they 



232 Leonard Wood 

served notice on the best men in the army 
and navy that they jeopardized their careers 
if they told the truth in the interest of our 
people as a whole." 



CHAPTER IX 
A soldier's reward 

Attempt to shelve General Wood on the eve of his departure for 
the front— Angry protests from the public, the press, and 
from leading men— Wood's parting address to his men- 
Whispering propaganda that order was given because of the 
General's physical unfitness— The loth Division trained in 
record time— A military review at Camp Funston— The 
ideals of a Christian soldier— Putting the division to school at 
the signing of the armistice— The Government's tardy change 
of attitude towards General Wood— Wood's part in the suc- 
cess of the American doughboy in France— The General's 
real reward. 

They took counsel to humble his soldier's pride 

By holding him back from the goal. 
But he pressed his lips, and he tempered his men 

In the flame of his dauntless soul. 

Glory and guerdon to him who sent 

His spirit to France and the Rhine 
In the fighting host that he trained and loved— 

First soldier of the line! 

Harry Torsey Baker. 

Late in May of 1918, the crack 89th Divi- 
sion of the National Army— a division which 
later made an enviable reputation at the 

233 



234 Leonard Wood 

front — had completed its training under Gen- 
eral Wood at Camp Funston and received 
orders to entrain for the port of embarkation. 
Its commander, who had had his tour of in- 
spection at the front and had passed success- 
fully his special examination for field service, 
thereupon disposed of his saddle horses and 
made all his arrangements with reference to a 
long tour of service in France. 

Arriving in New York City, the port of 
embarkation, General Wood was handed a 
telegraphic order from the War Department 
which detached him from his command and 
assigned him to duty at the Presidio, the de- 
serted military post at San Francisco. The 
dispatch contained no explanation whatever 
of the reason for issuing it, and none has since 
been furnished. What this sudden blow 
meant to a fighting soldier like General Wood 
few will ever know, for with stoical determina- 
tion he does not talk of it, though he did ask 
the Administration to rescind the order. 

If the country had been shocked at the 
treatment of General Wood at the time of our 
entering the war — when his department had 



A Soldier's Reward 235 

been broken up without consulting him and 
the attempt made to shelve him at a remote 
post in the Pacific — it was now fairly stupefied. 
Even the New York World, the Administra- 
tion organ, said that it "will give every fair- 
minded man a bad taste in the mouth." The 
pro-Administration Brooklyn Eagle attempted 
to make out that this action had been taken be- 
cause General Pershing did not want to have 
General Wood as a subordinate; that the 
"order came as a complete surprise to the 
President," and they hoped some staff officer 
would be rapped over the knuckles for "hav- 
ing issued such an order without consult- 
ing the President." The idea that any staff 
officer would have ventured to issue such an 
order without the knowledge of the President 
was, of course, too absurd for serious con- 
sideration. 

Ex-President Taft said in the Philadelphia 

Ledger : 

"The country is seriously disappointed 
that General Wood has not been permitted 
to go abroad with the division which he has 



A Soldier's Reward 237 

emment did not wish to hear. The Presi- 
dent declined to receive him. The Senate 
Mihtary Affairs Committee summoned him 
and he made the Capitol corridors ring." 

Senator Johnson of California, speaking on 
the floor of the United States Senate, declared 
that this act of the President "illustrates the 
extent which we have gone in transmuting this 
democracy into an autocracy." 

It was necessary for General Wood to say a 
word at the time of taking leave of his di- 
vision. It is simple and straightforward, 
without complaint or recrimination, but it 
does not entirely hide the anguish at his dis- 
appointment of his hope : 

"I will not say good-bye, but consider it 
a temporary separation — at least I hope so. 
I have worked hard with you and you have 
done excellent work. I had hoped very 
much to take you over to the other side. 
In fact, I had no intimation, direct or in- 
direct, of any change of orders until we 
reached here the other night. The orders 



238 Leonard Wood 

have been changed and I am to go back to 
Funston. I leave for that place to-morrow 
morning. I wish you the best of luck and 
ask you to keep up the high standard of 
conduct and the work you have maintained 
in the past. The orders stand : and the only 
thing to do is to do the best we can — all of 
us — to win the war. That is what we are 
here for. That is what you have been 
trained for. I shall follow your career with 
the greatest interest — with just as much in- 
terest as though I were with you. Good 
luck: and God bless you!" 

The 89th or "Leonard Wood Division" now 
rechristened itself the "Orphan Division," 
and it paid the greatest possible tribute to its 
leader in the enviable record it made at the 
front as a splendidly trained fighting division. 

An angry resentment found voice from one 
end of the country to the other over this 
punishment of a great soldier for putting his 
country's dire need before his own personal 
fortunes. This note was so strong and insist- 
ent that the army orders were modified to 



A Soldier's Reward 239 

the extent that General Wood, instead of being 
shelved at the Presidio, was allowed to go 
back to Camp Funston and exercise his un- 
usual skill in training another division. The 
General's motto is, "Do things but don't talk 
about them." 

The official press bureau now began to throw 
out suggestions that General Wood was being 
held for an important post at the front — to 
command an army in Italy, in Siberia, etc. 
The earlier rumors of like nature having been 
shown to be false, these echoes were apparently 
not taken very seriously by the public. The 
whispering propaganda, however, which was 
carried throughout the coimtry to the effect 
that General Wood was physically unfit for 
field service and that this was the real reason 
why he had not been allowed to go to the front, 
gained wide currency and was no doubt con- 
firmed in the popular mind by Secretary 
Baker's statement before the Military Affairs 
Committee that the order had been issued 
"for military reasons." 

When General Wood arrived at Camp Fun- 
ston the new loth Division was just arriving 



240 Leonard Wood 

at the camp. It was of course anxious to 
complete its training in time to reach the front 
and get into the fighting before hostiHties 
should cease, as it was already evident that 
Foch was fast driving the Huns out of France. 
The General endeavored to meet this laudable 
ambition, and his success in whipping this 
body of recruits into shape is probably with- 
out a parallel in our army service, if it is in the 
history of any army. The first men of the 
division had begun to organize into groups 
on August loth. They were prepared and 
trained ready to leave for the front on No- 
vember 1st, less than three months later, and 
the six officers of the British and French Ser- 
vice Mission, which had arrived in the middle 
of September and been with the division for 
six weeks, as a result of a critical examination, 
declared the loth Division to be the best pre- 
pared and best trained of any that they had 
seen in the United States. 

On August 24th, a divisional parade was 
planned and the people of Kansas posted 
themselves on the hills of the military reserva- 
tion to observe the result. Long before day- 



A Soldier's Reward 241 

light, the reservation had been closed to traffic 
and nearly 30,000 men with long lines of trans- 
portation, artillery, etc., began to move out. 
Each unit had its schedule requiring that it 
pass a certain point at a certain time; and a 
staff officer present has reported "that it was 
a more or less unexpected but a very agreeable 
surprise to note that the last unit swung into 
line and came to rest on the review field exactly 
on the minute set for the commencement of the 
review proper. ' ' He adds : 

"The review was really a wonderful 
demonstration of the General's ability as an 
organizer and leader. Military men who 
understand the difficulties of such an or- 
ganization looked upon it as nothing short 
of marvellous. A number of the French 
and British officers, who have seen fighting 
on the other side, were especially loud in 
their praise." 

The soldier who gets his training under Gen- 
eral Wood learns, however, something besides 
tactics; he gets sound advice to guide him in 



16 



242 Leonard Wood 

the struggle ahead. In a talk to the men of 
the loth Division on September 12th, the 
General said: 

"You are going over there. So live that 
you go over clean and sound. Take care of 
yourselves, get into the best possible con- 
dition. You will feel a lot better when you 
come up against death some day if you have 
been a clean and decent man, don't forget 
that. The mucker isn't a good soldier. 
He may make a good impetuous fighter in a 
moment of excitement, but he will not in the 
trenches or along the line. There is a reli- 
gion of the trenches over there. It is founded 
on doing your duty and saying mighty little, 
keeping clean, obeying orders, and being on 
the job. That is the soldier's religion over 
there: duty — come what may. . . . 

"Respect your uniform. Do not take it 
where you would not take the women of 
your own family. It is the uniform of your 
cotmtry, thousands of our men have died in 
it. Keep it clean, don't dishonor it by 
taking it where you would be ashamed 



A Soldier's Reward 243 

to take your mother, your wife, or your 
sister. 

"There has never been a time when moral 
force has been more important than in this 
war. The old romance of war is gone; no 
more of the three or four days' hard fighting, 
something accomplished, and then a rest, 
but it is just hammer away all the time and 
the fellow that can smile last is the one who 
is going to win. It is a struggle requiring 
character and determination. We want the 
kind of soldier that Cromwell describes. 
'A God-fearing man well spoken of by the 
people.' That is the kind of soldier we 
need. And it is the kind of soldier we are 
getting now, for we are a Christian people 
and our new army is the people in arms. 

"You are giving everything, you are 
offering everything you have, including life 
itself, to win this war. You typify, your 
arms typify, all that is best in the tradition 
of soldiers; the man that goes out to give 
everything that others may live, that right 
may prevail — man can do nothing finer. . . . 

"A real soldier tells little of what he has 



244 Leonard Wood 

done and never brags of what he is going to 
do. Be modest. Now you are going into 
France, probably, or into Belgium. You 
are going to live in the houses, in the vil- 
lages, towns, crowd the streets, of the 
people who have been fighting our battle — 
mind you, our battle — for four years. 
Don't go as braggarts go, go as gentlemen; 
a real soldier is always a gentleman. Be 
modest, quiet, observant of the traditions 
of these people, careful of their feelings. 
The dead and permanently crippled of 
France in this war number two million of 
men. That is France's contribution to the 
war. England's is about the same. Do 
you know what that means? A coltmm of 
squads well closed up that reaches more 
than across the whole State of Kansas, and 
would take seven days and five hours for 
them to pass you at an ordinary marching 
gait. I refer to the French alone. Those 
are the dead and permanently crippled 
alone. Now, when you come into their 
land do not say, 'We have come to win the 
war.' Simply say, 'We have come over to 



A Soldier's Reward 245 

help you win the war,' and if we do as well 
as they have done we shall reflect honor 
upon our country, our army, and our 
flag. . . . 

"And now another word to the officers. 
. . . There is nothing that so quickly dis- 
turbs morale, good purpose, and that spirit 
ot loyalty on the part of men to their officers 
as an arbitrary exercise of unreasonable 
authority. In other words, remember your 
men are human beings, and remember some- 
thing else, if you destroy a man's self- 
respect you absolutely destroy him as a 
soldier and you might as well send him back 
home. You have got to preserve a man's 
self-respect if he is to maintain a respect for 
you and that kind of loyalty which comes 
from confidence in you. Let the men 
realize that you are their best friend, that 
the authority you exercise is for their well- 
being, and you will have no trouble." 

When, on November nth, hostilities had 
been prematurely ended by the signing of the 
armistice — with an unconditional surrender 



246 Leonard Wood 

already reflected in the military situation, in 
Foch's intended drive, in Germany's bitter 
wails, as well as in a new crop of diplomatic 
notes — there was the danger that with the 
supreme test for which the men in the ranks 
had been steeling themselves now suddenly 
removed, there would be a sudden drop in 
morale. 

Most of the men at Funston were farmers, 
and General Wood at once carried out arrange- 
ments with the Kansas Agricultural College, 
located a few miles only from the camp, for a 
course of instruction for the soldiers in such 
branches of agricultural work as stock-raising, 
land fertilization, etc. In addition, it was ar- 
ranged to take three himdred men into the 
workshops and laboratories for instruction in 
mechanical engineering. At the camp itself 
the mornings only were given over to mihtary 
instruction and training, and the afternoons 
devoted to study. As a contemporary has re- 
marked: "There is in all this a breadth of 
vision and an intelligent patriotism quite char- 
acteristic of General Wood. It is worthy of 
him at his best and that is saying a good deal." 



A Soldier's Reward 247 

Tardily the Government awakened to an 
appreciation of the people's resentment over 
the treatment of General Wood. He was 
called to Washington and the Distinguished 
Service Medal was pinned upon his breast by 
the Secretary- of War. He was now trans- 
ferred to the command of the Central Depart- 
ment of the Army with headquarters at 
Chicago, one of many transfers made under 
President Wilson's Administration, but the 
only one which was not in the nature of a de- 
motion and pimishment. 

The real reward of this sturdy type of Chris- 
tian soldier lies in a clear conscience. Re- 
sponsibility for the hundreds of thousands of 
brave lives that were sacrificed on the battle- 
fields of Europe because his solemn warnings, 
so insistently sounded, failed to galvanize the 
Government into action, does not lie with him. 
If, \mder]this fearful handicap, the General did 
indeed fail in his attempt to prevent the break- 
down of the War Department when the storm 
had broken, he at least had a ver\' large 
part in the responsibiHt\- for the splendid rec- 
ord of the American dous:hbov at the front 



248 Leonard Wood 

— America's one great feat in the war — 
the one fact that makes every true Ameri- 
can swell with pride at the mere thought 
of it. 

The private soldier is no better and no worse 
than the officers with whom he comes into 
direct contact, his own company officers. No 
matter how good the material in the ranks 
may be, it is largely wasted under incompetent 
officers. In the American Expeditionary 
Force the company officers were with few 
exceptions well trained, and it has been the 
puzzle of European army staffs how this result 
was accomplished when no officers' reserve of 
consequence existed in our army at the out- 
break of the war. 

The answer to this puzzle is found in the 
Plattsburg camps, through which passed dur- 
ing the four years in which they were in 
operation more than 20,000 men, hand-picked 
and of the right type, and at least 15,000 of 
them received commissions to form the nu- 
cleus of the 80,000 new officers who had mili- 
tary instruction. When war was declared, 
this system had been tried out and was in sue- 



A Soldier's Reward 249 

cessful operation, so that it was taken over at 
once. Of the 150,000 appHcations received to 
enter the officers' training camps, 40,000 were 
chosen, and in forty days they were ready to 
begin their work. The Piatt sburg men were 
largely included in this 40,000, and they con- 
stituted the absolutely necessary nucleus of 
instructed men to serve as non-commissioned 
officers, for the lack of which long and vexa- 
tious delays must occur. The geometrical 
progression formed by the numbers who at- 
tended the Plattsburg camps during the years 
1913 to 1917 is as follows: 1913, '222\ 1914, 
667; 1915, 3406; 1916, 16,137; 1917 (ist 
camp), 40,000. No other comment seems 
necessary. 

There was of necessity the sharpest contrast 
between company officers of the A. E. F. and 
the officers of higher command who had been 
jumped to positions which were far outside 
their experience and of which they knew next 
to nothing. This was a result of unprepared- 
ness which did not, however, reflect upon 
them. A story which was current in France 
relates to a distinguished colonel on the French 



250 Leonard Wood 

General Staff to whom was put the typical 
American question, "What do you think of the 
American Army?" Now the Frenchman is 
diplomatic, but his vision is remarkably clear, 
and after some futile squirming in the hope of 
avoiding direct answer, the colonel replied, 
"There is no better army in Europe from the 
captains down." 

For having so unique a responsibility in 
the success of the American doughboy in the 
war, and at the sacrifice of his personal for- 
tunes having forced the Government to ac- 
tion, if not indeed in time to prevent terrible 
sacrifices, at least in time to prevent the 
downfall of civilization, General Wood's re- 
ward, like that of the Father of his Country, 
is in the heart of his country. He will in- 
creasingly be made aware that there is a whole- 
some appreciation of what his service has been, 
and if this should induce that wisdom which 
springs from experience and lays hold of its 
bitter lesson to make preparation for the 
future, Leonard Wood, we may feel sure, will 
ask no other reward. Furthermore, his name 
will always be linked with that of Roosevelt 



A Soldier's Reward 251 

because he possesses the robust and sterling 
qualities which drew the two men together 
and made Leonard Wood the man of all others 
whom Roosevelt admired and loved. 

Like his late friend, Roosevelt, Leonard 
Wood loves his home life and is greatly de- 
voted to his family. In his autobiography, 
Roosevelt tells us how, when they were together 
in the national capital. Wood and he took the 
children of both families for frequent rambles 
in Rock Creek Park lying to the north of the 
city; and it has been proposed to erect the 
great Roosevelt memorial on the crest of 
the hill in this park. 

While engaged in administrative work in 
Cuba or in military duties in the Philippine 
Islands, Mrs. Wood has accompanied her hus- 
band, for she is accustomed to the hardships 
of an active army officer's life and is, more- 
over, much interested in outdoor sports and 
exercises, especially horseback riding and sail- 
ing. Her people came from the vicinity of 
Morristown, N. J., though she was educated 
in Washington and lived there for much of 
the time before her marriage. 



252 Leonard Wood 

Her daughter, Louise Barbara Wood, who 
is just completing her education, has hke her 
mother been engaged in Red Cross work and 
is planning to go to France to take part in the 
important reconstruction work there. The 
Woods are Episcopalians. 

Mrs. Wood has done an immense amount of 
charitable and Red Cross work among the 
poor, and for a period of two years before the 
war she was at the head of a large women's Red 
Cross organization in New York City. Ever 
since, wherever she has been, she has kept up 
her active Red Cross work, and she has asso- 
ciated herself with the work of the Young 
Women's Christian Association and other 
women's organizations. She is now the Hon- 
orary President of the Women's Roosevelt 
Memorial Association. 

General Wood has two sons and a daughter. 
Both his sons responded promptly to their 
country" 's call and were in service during the 
war. Leonard Wood, Jr.. went to the Officers' 
Training Camp at Fort Oglethorpe, Ga., and 
came out as a First Lieutenant. He was as- 
signed to the 8 1st Division at Camp Jackson, 



A Soldier's Reward 



.:jo 



South Carolina. He went overseas with this 
di\*i5ion, was later promoted to captain, and 
became the Assistant Intelligence OflBcer at 
the di\'ision for practically the remainder o£ 
the war. He returned to this country in July, 
1 91 9, was discharged, and is now engagel in 
the oil business in Texas. The younger son, 
Osborne C. Wood, left Har%'ard Universty, 
where he was a student, in March. 191 8. 
Though he was still under age. he enlisted as 
a private in the Regular Army. He was later 
transferred to the 355th Infantn.- 89 th Divi- 
sion, from which organization he went to a 
training camp. He was graduated as Se-.^:::! 
Lieutenant in August. 191S, and on t, - 

of age on the 20th of September he w?-s 
missioned with that rank. He was . 
to the 164th Depot Brigade at Fort ? .. 

Kansas, and a little later was appointed Aiie- 
de-Camp to the General, in which capadr>- he 
has ser\'ed since. August 25. lOiQ, he was 
promoted to First Lieutenant. 



ADDENDUM 

THE RESTORER OF LAW AND ORDER 

Every great and exhaustive war in the 
course of human history has been followed by 
an interval characterized by an abnormal and 
extremely dangerous condition of the body 
poUtic. The mass psychology of these periods 
may be described as that of national shell- 
shock, to borrow a phrase which the war has 
given us. The several dominating symptoms 
of this nervous disorder of the state are 
all well defined and invariably present, but 
collectively they may be described as a fixed 
obsession that the foundations of the political, 
social, industrial, and intellectual life of the 
world are in a state of flux, and that those 
things which have been our reliance in the past 
are all to be replaced by a new and superior 
order. The millennium is envisioned as heaven 
is brought down to earth. 

' January, 1920. 

255 



256 Leonard Wood 

These epochs of pseudo-ideaUsm are ushered 
in by such an eruption of emotions that the 
seat of reason seems Ukely to become unhinged, 
and from this distemper no social class is 
altogether exempt, though the proletariat and 
the most highly intellectual stratum have 
always been by far the most susceptible. At 
the bottom of the social scale, the mob spirit is 
easily invoked by radicals seeking to set up an 
autocracy based on false and shallow but most 
alluring Utopian ideals — ideals which are 
largely supplied by generally well-meaning 
but most unpractical representatives of the 
intelligenzia . Roused to a state of incipient 
insanity by the teachings of these leaders, the 
mob tears at the very foundations of the state. 
The fundamental right of property is denied, 
and government by threat and intimidation is 
attempted. In the higher strata of society, 
there is an alarming recrudescence of the 
occult, which is greatly stimulated by the loss 
of kinsmen in battle. No illusion is too 
preposterous to find converts, and if stimu- 
lated by powerful propaganda, such illusions 
constitute a serious menace to the state. 



Addendum 257 

These post-war periods call for a steadying 
hand as do no others. 

The symptoms of national and international 
shell-shock have been much more marked and 
far reaching in the present period only because 
the war itself has been so much greater and 
more nearly world wide in its effects. Start- 
ing in Russia, the country in which the war 
losses and the sufferings of the people resulting 
from it have been most stupendous, the disease 
has spread eastward into Siberia and westward 
across Europe to America; the resistance to 
its invasion being determined both by the de- 
gree of exhaustion and war weariness within 
each state and by the former measure of 
vigor of the body politic. 

In our own country the first more serious 
outbreaks of after-war insanity appeared as 
race riots accompanied by indiscriminate 
shooting, lynching, and arson. The riots of 
east St. Louis were soon followed by similar 
eruptions in Knoxville, Washington, and Chi- 
cago. Many people were shot in street battles 
and the infection seemed to be spreading with 
dangerous rapidity throughout the country. 
17 



258 Leonard Wood 

Late in September, these outbreaks of lawless- 
ness seemed to be reaching a climax at Oma- 
ha, where the court-house and the jail were 
burned by a mob of citizens and where the 
sixty-year-old mayor was seized by the mob 
and strung up to a telegraph pole because in 
discharge of his duty he had refused to deliver 
up a negro prisoner. Cut down before life be- 
came extinct, he was hauled up a second time 
to be again rescued. Rendered unconscious, 
for hours his life hung in the balance, but he 
finally recovered. The mayor thus put out 
of the way, the negro prisoner was deHvered 
over to the mob by his fellow prisoners when 
they were placed in danger of being roasted 
alive by the burning of the jail. He was 
promptly hanged and his body was trailed 
behind an automobile through the streets to 
the wild delight of a mob of normally respect- 
able citizens. Nothing approaching these 
disgraceful proceedings had ever occurred 
in an American city. Everything was done 
openly and was apparently approved by the 
greater portion of the citizens of Omaha. 
Clerks and even ' ' lady ' ' stenographers were, 



Addendum 259 

according to the correspondent of the New 
York Times, openly boasting of their part in 
the proceedings, including the murder of the 
negro and the attempted murder of the mayor. 
Upon this scene of disorder and violence, 
came federal troops hastily summoned under 
the command of General Wood who was 
in charge of the Central Department of the 
Army with headquarters at Chicago. Ma- 
chine guns were posted at strategic points and 
the streets patrolled by squads of soldiers. 
A military balloon was sent up and swayed 
back and forth over the city to give immediate 
warning of the outbreak of fires or of attempts 
at disorder. This was, however, not all. 
The seat of the entire trouble was removed 
when measures were taken to apprehend all per- 
sons who had taken part in the murder and to 
bring them to justice by turning them over 
to the civil authorities for legal prosecution. 
General Wood issued the following proclama- 
tion: 

As a result of the recent serious defiance of 
law and of the constituted authorities of the 



26o Leonard Wood 

City of Omaha, the Governor of Nebraska 
has called upon the President of the United 
States for federal aid in the maintenance of 
law and order, and the undersigned has 
been duly charged by the Secretary of War, 
acting under competent authority, with the 
preservation of order and the safeguarding 
of life and property in the City of Omaha. 
To this end, such instructions as may be- 
come necessary will, from time to time, be 
issued. All persons within the limits of 
the City of Omaha will obey such instruc- 
tions as may be issued and will co-operate 
to the fullest extent in carrying out the 
same. 

Those persons who had been proudly boast- 
ing of their part in the disgraceful proceedings 
now became frightened and spared no effort to 
make themselves as inconspicuous as possible 
or else to slip away from the city. Normal 
conditions were quickly restored and the race 
riots of our American cities seemed to have 
come to an end. Law and order had not alone 
been re-established in one sorely threatened 



Addendum 261 

community, but the scat of the trouble had 
been located and the remedy found. 

Hardly had the troubles at Omaha been 
settled, when the great steel strike drew the 
nation's attention to the industrial center at 
Gary near the city of Chicago. The month of 
September had been characterized by a veri- 
table epidemic of strikes in one trade after 
another until the paralysis of all the nation's 
industry was threatened. 

On October 4th an alarming situation de- 
veloped at Gary, the center of a steel produc- 
ing district in which 80,000 men had struck, 
where the blast furnaces of the steel company's 
plant were damaged by the strikers to the 
extent of a milHon dollars, and where the out- 
put of necessary steel products was reduced by 
no less than 2,000,000 tons. On October 6th 
federal aid was invoked, and after disturbances 
in which a mob of 15,000 rioters had charged 
the police with bricks and stones. General 
Wood took charge of the situation. A body of 
1000 overseas veterans of the 4th Division 
was rushed to Gary armed with rifles, artillery, 
and machine guns, and other soldiers from the 



262 Leonard Wood 

6th Division later joined them. Guns were 
mounted in parks and other strategic points 
and directed down the principal thoroughfares. 
Many of the strikers had appeared in the 
uniform of the United States Army, and acting 
under orders of General Wood, Colonel Mapes 
required these men to show their discharge 
papers. If they insisted on wearing their 
uniform they were set to work to maintain 
order ; otherwise they were required to remove 
their uniform and were dismissed with a warn- 
ing. They became an important aid in main- 
taining order. 

No attempt whatever was made to inter- 
fere in the quarrel between the strikers and 
the operators, and picketing by strikers was 
permitted. Law and order were however in- 
sisted upon and no violence permitted. 

The following proclamation was issued : 

PROCLAMATION 

Gary, Indiana, 
October 6, 1919. 

I. The Governor of the State of Indiana, 
having called upon the Department Com- 



Addendum 363 

mander for Federal Troops, for the protec- 
tion of life and property and the maintenance 
of public order, the State and City authori- 
ties being unable to protect and maintain 
the same, the Commanding General, Central 
Department, acting under instructions and 
authority of the War Department, has as- 
sumed control of the City of Gary, Indiana, 
which until further orders, is under Military 
Control. 

2. It is the purpose of the Military Au- 
thorities to conduct the affairs of the City of 
Gary, to the greatest extent possible, through 
the City Government, which becomes for 
the time being an agency of the Military 
Authorities. 

3. The following notice is given to all 
persons within the limits of the City of 
Gary: 

(a) No pubHc assemblages or meetings 

will be permitted in any park, 
street, or portion of the City. 

(b) All processions and parades are 

prohibited, as are demonstra- 
tions against the authorities. 



-^^4 Leonard Wood 

(c) No persons other than the police, 

Military Authorities, troops, 
and members of the City Gov- 
ernment will be allowed to 
carry arms or weapons of any 
description. 

(d) All men in the uniform of the 

United States, whether in the 
service of the United States or 
otherwise, who are not a part 
of the United States armed 
forces on duty within the City 
limits, will be examined and 
those who are still in the ser- 
vice of the United States will 
be attached to any organi- 
zation on duty in the City 
and continued on duty during 
the present disturbance. All 
others in United States uni- 
form (not in the service of the 
United States) will be held 
until further investigation. 

(e) All men deputized as police who 

are wearing any portion of 



Addendum 265 

the distinctive uniform of 
the United States will wear 
their special badge on the left 
breast, 
(f) The troops and the police, including 
special police deputies, are 
charged with the carrying out 
. of these instructions which 
will be rigidly enforced. 

4. Theatres, Lecture Halls, Moving Pic- 
ture Shows, and other well conducted places 
of amusement will continue as usual. 

5. All persons within the City limits 
are admonished to observe and carefully 
and rigidly comply with the above in- 
structions. 

6. Any person or persons having any 
petition to present or complaint to make 
will present the same to the commanding 
officer for his consideration and action. 

Leonard Wood, 
Major-General, U. S. Army. 

The support of both parties to the strike was 
obtained by this course. It soon developed 



266 Leonard Wood 

that the strikes were being directed by alien 
"reds," and, acting with the agents of the 
Department of Justice, a vigorous search was 
instituted and the "red" headquarters raided. 
October 14th a plot was unearthed to destroy 
government property and to initiate a general 
uprising of steel workers headed by "red" 
agitators which was to cover all the territory 
from Colorado to West Virginia. Connection 
was traced between the activities of the Gary 
" reds " and the bomb outrages which had been 
directed against the lives of Attorney-General 
Palmer, Judge Charles C. Nott, and others, 
in the months of May and June. These 
revelations greatly cleared up the situation 
by showing up the radical leadership of the 
disturbances. On October 24th, at the end 
of the fifth week, the strike was practically 
over. 

In November serious disturbances occurred 
in the coal mining districts of West Virginia 
and large forces of armed miners were march- 
ing from one district into another. Governor 
Cornwell called upon General Wood for assist- 
ance, and without delay about 1200 troops of 



Addendum 267 

the 1st Division were sent into the district 
and all hostile movements ceased and much 
bloodshed was avoided. 

Later on, during the coal strike, which was 
a strike aimed against the public, the poor 
as well as the rich, the Governor of Kansas, 
interested in the necessity of securing coal for 
hospitals and other places, decided to under- 
take mining operations with volunteers. After 
conference with General Wood, the latter 
agreed to establish an encampment for regular 
troops in the mining district so that in case 
of need the protection of life and property 
would be insured. 

During the employment of troops, both in 
West Virginia and Kansas, the best of rela- 
tions existed between the people, the working 
groups, and the troops and no one was injured. 
Order was preserved and life and property 
were safeguarded. 

Firmness, combined with tact and fairness, 
had relieved an alarming situation without the 
loss of a life or the firing of a shot, and the 
faith of the nation's citizenry in the stability 
of the foundations of the state had been 



268 Leonard Wood 

enormously increased. For the period of 
hysteria through which we are now passing, 
the constant watchword of General Wood 
is "steady." 



PARTIAL LIST OF WRITINGS OF GENERAL 
LEONARD WOOD 

" The Military Government of Cuba," ^m, Acad, of Pol. & Social 
Science, vol. xxi., 1903, pp. 153-183. 

"Training for War in a Time of Peace," illustrated, Outlook, vol. 
xciii., Dec. 25, 1909, pp. 977-989. 

"Rifle Practice for Public Schools," Collier's, vol. xlvi., Dec. 
17, 1910, p. 16. 

"Teaching Americans to Shoot," Collier's, vol. xlvii., Aug. 12, 
191 1, pp. 15-30. 

"What Is the Matter with Our Army?" Independent, vol. Ixxii., 
Feb. 8, 191 2, pp. 301-307- 

"Why We Have No Army," McClure's Magazine, vol. xx.xviii., 
May, 19 12, pp. 667-683. 

Address at Ohio State University in 19 14 on " Military Training 
in Colleges." (Privately printed.) 

"The Army's New and Bigger Job," World's Work, vol. xxviii., 
May, 19 1 4, pp. 75-84- 

Facts of Interest Concerning the Military Resources and Policy of 
the United States, War Department, Washington, I9i4,pp.32. 

The Moral Obligation of Citizenship, Princeton University Press, 
1915, PP- 76- 

"The Constructive Work of the American Army," Annals Amer- 
ican Academy Pol. and Soc. Science, vol. Ixi., 1915, pp. 257- 
262. 

"Universal Military Training," Proc.and Add. Nat. Educat. Assoc., 
vol. liv., 1916, pp. 159-165. 

269 



270 Leonard Wood 



Our Military History, Its Facts and Fallacies, Chicago, The Reilly 
and Britton Company, 19 16, pp. 240. 

Address on " Preparation for National Defence" made before the 
Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York, March 22, 
1916, pp. 7. 

"Plattsburg and Citizenship," Century Magazine, vol. Ixxii., 
May, 1917, pp. 49-54- 

Universal Military Training. Statements made by Major Gen- 
eral Leonard Wood before the Senate Subcommittee, and 
the House Committee on Military Affairs, Washington, 1917, 
pp. II1-151, 257-308, 967-1107. (Hearings of Decemt»er 
18, 1916, Jan. 27 and 31, 1917.) 



BOOKS AND ARTICLES CONCERNING 
GENERAL LEONARD WOOD 

Theodore Roosevelt. "General Leonard Wood, a Model 
American Military Administrator," Outlook, vol. Ixi., Jan. 
7, 1899, pp. 19-22. 

Henry Harrison Lewis. "General Wood at Santiago, Amer- 
icanizing a Cuban City," Fortnightly Review, vol. Ixxi., March 
I, 1899, pp. 401-412. 

Secretary of War. "Attack by United States Troops on 
Mount Da jo," Senate Doc. 289, 1st Sess. 59th Cong., 1905 
-06 (full correspondence exonerating General Wood from 
charges of inhumanity displayed in this battle). 

Robert Hammond Murray. "The Pacifier of the Philippines, 
the Strenuous and Adventurous Career of General Leonard 
Wood, 'a Soldier of the New Army,' who Returns to a De- 
partmental Command in the United States," World's Work, 
vol. xvi., Oct., 1908, pp. 10,773-10,778. 

James Creelman. Pearson's Magazine, March, 1909. 
Ray Stannard Baker. "General Leonard Wood," American 
Magazine, vol. Ixix., 1910, pp. 760-764. 

Theodore Roosevelt. "Leonard Wood," Outlook, vol. xcv., 
July 30, 1910, pp. 711-713. 

Henry A. Wise Wood. "General Wood and Preparedness," 
Nation, March 2, 1916, p. 251. 

Editorial. " The Removal of Major General Wood," Scientific 
American, April 14, 1917, p. 368. 

Isaac F. Marcossen. "Leonard Wood — American, Man of th« 
Hour," Everybody's Magazine, vol. xxxvi., Mar., 1917, pp- 
257-269. 

271 



272 Leonard Wood 

Isaac F. Marcossen. Leonard Wood, Prophet of Preparedness, 
New York, John Lane, 1917, pp. 92. 

Editorial. "Resentment over Treatment of General Wood," 
Current Opinion, vol. Ixv., July, 1918, pp. 3-4. 

Joseph Hamblen Sears. The Career of Leonard Wood, illus- 
trated, Appletons, 1919. PP- 273. 



i Clr) ^u 



^0' 









0- 













^^ *'t; 












^-^c 



' ■"*-/ '^- \/ -'Si' \<i^ yg 
















-'^ % 







■**-'^-:.\ c°^c^.> y..^;;.\ 















1^ . * • 




.**'^ 




.0^ 



,^ „ _„„° ^■^<^ 










^J.r$. 




iOv- 



^^•^^, •- 




4.0 

^K* 







=-i>. ,^< 









N. MANCHESTER 
INDIANA 46962 








♦ -N 



•^0' 

Ao 

^ ^ 



